Habits are a tricky thing to build. And one can find it difficult to incorporate lifestyle changes they want to make in that complexity.

Take, for example, the effort that goes into working out daily. One needs to find the time and motivation to travel to a gym, learn and implement exercise routines, and ensure they eat well enough to sustain their energy and growth. That seems pretty daunting. 

To shift around your daily routine in a massive way requires tremendous willpower. Furthermore, for truly beneficial habits, the effects don’t compound until much farther into the future. Because our we’re inclined towards immediate rewards and little work, it seems like there is an immense resistance to overcome. And it’s easy to understand why most Americans don’t participate in daily exercise even with its numerous health and productivity benefits.

Perhaps, instead, we can remove this misnomer of habits being “lifestyle changes”. While true in the long-run, there’s greater utility in seeing habits as a continuous build-up toward our desired effect. By taking small baby steps, we can avoid fatigue from massive change while still progressing towards our goals. 

This seems like an obvious concept. And yet very few people actually try it. The reason is because there’s a certain psychology that impedes people from implementing this change. And it’s something we need to overcome as well if we can learn how to do this ourselves.

Dreamers

There was a podcast hosted on Impact Theory featuring Ramit Sethi. In it, he described an interaction with one of his readers who wanted to run a mile a day, but felt like she didn’t have the time to do so. Ramit responded that she should simply run three miles a week instead since this is more feasible. But she got back saying, “What’s the point?”

Ramit pointed out that this person would rather dream about running a mile a day than actually run three miles a day.

We all know a little change is better than no change at all. Adding a couple veggies to our diet is better than none. Adding a few minutes of exercise or reading is better than none. Saving a bit more money is better than none at all. No doubt, over time these changes can perhaps make a more noticeable difference.

But we live in a world of expectations. And we imagine that change has to be momentous to be real. Gradual steps mean very little in the short-run. And since we can’t make that big change, we get stuck thinking about what it would be like if we could, rather than taking any initiative at all. This is the intense psychological barrier we need to overcome.

Understand the change you imagine is just that, an imagination. What’s real is the change you implement. So look at what you can do, not what you think you must. That means sacrificing your comparison to others to focus on yourself. And understanding that there is always a possibility of action.

Two Minutes

There’s a simple habit change that James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, recommends. It’s simply spending two minutes on the new habit you want to form.

He had a reader who found it difficult to get himself to exercise. He ended up going to the gym each day, but only for two minutes. Clearly this wasn’t enough time to train. But after a couple weeks, he heard himself saying, “Well I’m here so I might as well exercise”. 

Major changes can always be broken into smaller parts. Do you have trouble training? Or do you have trouble going to the gym? And perhaps if you just went to the gym, it would be easy for you to exercise? We often don’t consider the intricacies of habit change in this way. But when we do, it becomes easier to see the small steps we can make to form a new lifestyle.

Think about what just two minutes can do. I’m sure you have it in your day. And overtime, you’ll find the room to make the complete change you were looking for. There’s no need to rush. That might only keep you dreaming rather than acting. You just need to break in your new habit, and it’ll fit you eventually. 

Something I like to think about is the compounding effect Clear often brings up in his book. The idea is that if you were to get 1% better each day at something, you’ll be 37x better in one year. That’s all it takes. But it also goes the other way. If you get one percent worse at something, you’ll eventually cascade down to zero.

And the truth is, inaction isn’t just staying level. It is a state of getting worse. And if you let it slide too far, you’ll end up worse than where you started. But if you just gave yourself two minutes, imagine where you’d be a year from now.