The key ideas

Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results

Stephen Guise, 2013

Why don't we do the things we know would be good for us? Stephen Guise found the answer when, instead of a thirty-minute workout, he did a single push-up. You will learn why motivation lets you down, what drains your willpower, and how a stupidly small daily step turns into a habit.

Who it is for

For people who have long lost count of their promises to exercise or read every day. And for people tired of waiting for motivation before they finally get around to exercise, reading or a project of their own.

Be a person with embarrassingly small goals and impressive results, not one of the many with impressive goals and embarrassing results.

The thirty minutes that never started

December 28, 2012. Stephen Guise is about to work out: the plan is thirty minutes of exercise. He puts on upbeat music, pictures himself in great shape, talks himself into starting. Nothing works. His body doesn't want to, his mind keeps looking for a reason to put it off, and behind him lies a long line of New Year's resolutions that never turned into action.

Guise is an American author who wrote about self-development and yet kept breaking his own plans. In 2013 he published a book about what happened next that day. His question is simple: why do people who know exactly what is good for them so often fail to do it?

Guise's answer is unexpected. The problem is not laziness or weak character. It is strategy. We ask so much of ourselves that on a bad day we don't have the strength for it, and life is full of bad days. Guise proposes the opposite: take a requirement so small you can't fail to meet it, and meet it every day.

You will learn why motivation lets you down while willpower holds, what drains that willpower, and how to make sure you always have enough of it. You will see the eight steps Guise built his system from, and the rules that keep it from falling apart. And you will understand why a single push-up, easy to laugh at, became the start of everything for him.

One push-up that became a workout

Tired of talking himself into it, Guise came at the problem from the other side. If thirty minutes of exercise won't start, what is their exact opposite? One push-up. The task was so small it sounded silly. He got down on the floor and did it.

Then he noticed something simple: the position for one push-up is exactly the same as the start of a full workout. Since he was already on the floor, why not do another one? Then another. Then he set himself a new tiny goal, and then the next one. In the end he did twenty minutes of exercise and another ten minutes of ab work.

Guise explains what worked. Not once did the full weight of the big promise press down on him. Each time he agreed only to the next small step, and a step like that meets almost no resistance. The hardest part of anything is starting, and one push-up makes starting almost free.

From that day on he did at least one push-up a day. Over time exercise became part of his ordinary life, and later he started going to the gym. The book grew out of that experience. If this trick works with push-ups, maybe it works with everything else too?

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About the author

Stephen Guise is an American author of self-development books. Besides this one, his best-known, he wrote How to Be an Imperfectionist and Mini Habits for Weight Loss.

All books by this author: Stephen Guise

Terms from the book

  • Prefrontal cortex
  • Baumeister
  • Meta-analysis
  • Cue
  • Ego depletion
  • Basal ganglia
  • Lally
  • Mini habit: The author's term: a very small positive action you make yourself do every day, such as one push-up or two pages of a book.
  • Hagger: Martin Hagger is a British psychologist who led a 2010 meta-analysis on what depletes willpower.
  • Perceived difficulty: How hard a task feels to you, regardless of how much effort it actually takes.
  • Subjective fatigue: The tiredness you feel yourself, as opposed to the measured fatigue of the body.
  • Stupid small: The author's phrase: a step so small you feel awkward saying it out loud. This is how small Guise says your daily minimum should be.
  • Bonus reps: The author's term: everything you do beyond your minimum. A welcome extra, not a duty.

All terms

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