Lily (not her real name), a member of BSP NOVA, has been struggling. The current COVID-19 situation had, like it has for most of us, significantly impacted her life and routine. Some days were good, other days bad.
She felt lost.
When she was working, she felt a sense of purpose and meaning in what she did. Now though, due in part to having no work, Lily’s purpose that once burned brightly has been snuffed out by the pandemic. And that wasn’t the only loss she suffered—the time she spent with family and friends was gone too.
With that regular social connection lost, life felt emptier.
During a phone call with her, after catching me up on how things were going, she spoke about a goal she was working on. Lily said, “I have been trying to start a habit of brain dumping each day, just getting everything down on paper. I want to get 20 minutes done each day.”
Lily explained this was a chance for her to write about her day, feelings she was experiencing, or anything else; it was a worthwhile goal she wanted to tackle. Lily had confidence that, if she was able to do this activity, it would help her through these hard times.
But there was a problem: Lily wasn’t doing it.
I asked, “Why 20 minutes? What’s significant about that number?” She paused, then said, “I don’t know. I guess there’s no special reason for it. It felt like a good goal.”
Lily had a good goal—unfortunately, it was too much for her right now.
I’m confident the pre-pandemic-Lily would have crushed that goal. But things change. Lily’s life is stressful right now. She is peppered incessantly with news about the pandemic; her routine was disrupted and changed; and, she has no income. Achieving this goal was hard for her, but it didn’t have to be that way.
Lily found a solution: she made the brain dump easier to do.
Struggling? Make It Easier to Do
When it comes to changing a behavior—pandemic or no pandemic—a helpful strategy to make change easier is to make a behavior easier to do. Lily did just that.
20 minutes was a lot. Could we argue that working up to 20 minutes could be a good thing? Sure. We could argue that. But what we can’t argue is that writing for 20 minutes wasn’t happening.
So, I asked her, “What are your thoughts on doing less? On doing, say, one minute?”
She said, “Umm yeah, I guess I could try that. I hadn’t really thought to do it.”
Guess what happened next? Lily took her brain, and a writing utensil, then dumped all over that paper. Success! Getting the brain dump done was great, but, what’s even better than that, is she saw success. And success leads to success.
As she consistently shows up and keeps chipping away at that one minute of writing, it will get easier. Then, naturally, it will feel doable to add another minute, then another minute, and another minute still. And on days she doesn’t feel like writing a ton, she can write one minute only—which is still a success.
So, we’ve seen how this idea—making behaviors easier to do—is super-duper helpful, right?
Here’s the cool thing: making things easier to do works for all behaviors.
Let’s Take A Peek At Using This In Other Contexts
You haven’t done your workout at home. Not once. It’s sitting there, the workout program you were given, begging to be completed, yet, you haven’t done it. Well, no worries. How can you make it easier to do?
You could start by doing the warm-up and stopping there. Get your workout clothes on, maybe. Or, simply lay out the workout clothes the night before. Find the easiest first step you can make in that activity—then take that step.
Let’s look at another example.
Your goal is to read 10 pages of a book each day. It’s a great idea, but it’s not happening. What could you do? Start smaller. Read 5 pages. Read a page. Heck, read one paragraph or a sentence.
Find the starting point for success, then start.
These ideas are counterintuitive: in general, massive change is what we picture—not tiny actions like reading one sentence. We imagine pounds of body fat melting off our body revealing the physique of Greek Gods. We see ourselves crushing our big goals—20-minute brain dump here, read 10 pages there.
Know this: all those big outcomes—the giant, enticing goals you have—they start small. The key is getting started and consistently doing them. Plus, what good is a big action if it never gets taken? The big things are the small things.
Reading 10 pages is accomplished reading one word at a time.
The 20-minute brain dump is accomplished writing one word at a time.
The body of a Greek God is achieved one nutrition/exercise behavior at a time.
At this point, I’ve shared with you Lily’s struggle to make change and how she was able to get started on her goal—by making things easier to do; also, how you can use that in other contexts to help you take a Now, I want to share with you a story of another BSP NOVA member, who I’ll call Mark (not his real name).
Mark Needed More Discipline—Or Did He?
“Motivation is like a party-animal friend. Great for a night out, but not someone you would rely on to pick you up from the airport.” -BJ Fogg
My phone buzzed, so I looked and saw a text from Mark. He was struggling with his home workouts and asked to chat.
On the phone, Mark says, “I’m in a funk man. I haven’t started the home workout program you wrote. It’s frustrating and I need to start. And I know the issue—I need to be more disciplined. I’m just not motivated.”
After Mark finished speaking, I asked him a question. I asked, “Why do you say discipline is the issue?” After he told me why, I then asked if I could share some advice with him.
I relayed to him that discipline—and this goes for willpower and motivation—is unreliable.
Motivation comes and goes; it ebbs and flows. I mentioned that if we chase motivation or discipline as the solution to our problem, it may, as he was finding out, lead to frustration and failed attempts at change.
Also, I mentioned that a more helpful approach is making an activity easier to do.
Mark told me it made sense to him, so we talked about ways to make getting started easier. He decided that, in the morning, since he was successful working out in the morning before, that he would do the warmup. If he did the workout after, then great. If it was only the warmup, then that’s swell too.
Shrinking this activity down to an easier task made him feel more confident that he could accomplish it.
Ability Is Reliable
Whether your motivation is absurdly high, or abysmally low, making something easier to do can help you get started.
You don’t have to beat your head against the wall trying to make yourself more disciplined. And, you don’t need to watch YouTube videos to become more motivated to start. Instead, make the activity easier to do.
Ask yourself, “What will make this behavior easier to do?” Then, after some brain dumping, act. Shrink the activity down to something more doable. It could be doing the warmup and not the whole program; or doing 10 squats; or, smaller still, just putting your workout clothes on. Creating a crazy hard activity that you never do isn’t helpful. What is helpful, is making something easy to do.