Ok, today is my 5th post and the 5th day since I committed to writing one blog post every day. I was procrastinating on writing posts and sharing knowledge for a very long time. For years, I’d say.
Then I found this concept called Tiny Habits framed by BJ Fogg. It was a recommendation to me by one of my mentors Amy Hoy.
That pointed me to this concept called micro-commitments. The idea goes like this: If you set a micro-commitment, then you are likely to follow through and finish the task. That’s how the science of the human brain works.
The concept of Tiny Habits goes like this; you set micro-commitments with a trigger to do every day. Like:
- “AFTER I get up from the bed, I will do three push-ups.”
- “AFTER I lay down at night, I will think of one thing for which I’m grateful for.”
So, I broke down the Tiny Habit into a Tiny Goal. As I’m on a full-time job, it varies when I can write the blog post.
Should I write it in the morning or the evening, that doesn’t matter. My goal is to get that done within the day.
Another thing I got introduced to recently is setting Key 3s and Big 3s by my sales coach Jeremy DeMerchant of Permission To Sell. His advice me to write down and commit to the Key 3s for the week when I have my weekly coaching call with him.
I took the advice and applied to my everyday life. So I started writing a list of Key 3s for every day.
Initially, I failed with my Key 3s consistently because I always set staggering big goals, which will take a lot of time to complete. It was counterproductive in a way. This week I tried something different. I said I will write tiny goals instead of writing the big goals.
BEFORE:
My Key 3 looked like this: (Which made me procrastinate)
- Write one blog post, write one outline
- Design 10 slides
- Do 20 Push-ups
AFTER:
My key 3 for a day looks like this: (Which made me just to do it)
- Write 50 words for your blog
- Design one slide
- Do three push-ups
What happens is that these are not a biggie kinda goals for that day. So I end up convincing my procrastinator mind to say let’s do it. The good thing is that the other part of the brain that is my perfectionist will say, “Hey Ahmed, you can do more!”. That makes me complete what I started and eventually
- I’m churning out one blog post a day
- I have even designed an entire slide deck for my upcoming youtube series.
- I end up doing 15 or sometimes even 45 push-ups
It’s true, wait and see me doing wonders with this new tiny habit of mine to set my key 3s every day. It feels fulfilling to have these wins every day. And makes me more motivated towards my “Huge Goals” that I wrote down after reading “The 10X Rule: The Only Difference Between Success and Failure” book by Grant Cardone.
There is a free email course at the Tiny Habits website that runs for five daytime. There will be a personal coach working with you to implement a few tiny habits. So, go ahead and sign-up for it if you want to learn more about tiny habits and also to give it a shot.
If you are not convinced yet about setting tiny habits to get stuff done, you can watch this TEDx Talk by BJ Fogg to get a detailed understanding of the power of tiny habits.