Mini Habits v.1 PDF

Mini Habits
Smaller Habits, Bigger Results

Stephen Guise
Book Overview
What's A Mini Habit?
A mini habit is a very small positive behavior that you force yourself to do every day; its "too small to fail"
nature makes it weightless, deceptively powerful, and a superior habit-building strategy. You will have no
choice but to believe in yourself when you're always moving forward. The barrier to the first step is so
low that even depressed or "stuck" people can find early success and begin to reverse their lives right
away. And if you think one push-up a day is too small to matter, I've got one heck of a story for you!

Aim For The First Step
They say when you aim for the moon, you'll land among the stars. Well, that doesn't make sense, as the
moon is closer than the stars. I digress. The message is that you should aim very high and even if you fall
short, you'll still get somewhere. I've found the opposite to be true in regards to productivity and healthy
behaviors. When you aim for the moon, you'll won't shoot because it's too far away. But when you aim
for the step in front of you, you might just keep going and reach the moon.

KEY POINTS COVERED IN THIS SUMMARY:

1. Momentum and Motivation - Create momentum and motivation
even in the face of big goals
2. Goal Achievement - Automate your goals in just 3 steps
3. Define Your Cues - Set your triggers
4. Habits and the Brain - How our brain works in habit-forming
1) Creating Momentum and Motivation

How do we create momentum and motivation in the face of big and seemingly insurmountable
goals? How do we go forward even when we feel like it's so hard to make progress?

As per the great physicist Isaac Newton, the fundamental law of motion states:

An object at rest continues to stay at rest
while an object in motion continues to stay in motion
unless an external force is applied.

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The same way goes with our behavior. The same same way goes with our brain.
How our brain works

● Our brain likes to stay in a state of inertia.
● It doesn't like to change.
● It’s constantly fighting change.
● However, it doesn’t notice small changes that we make.

The basal ganglia is the area of the brain that’s largely responsible for motor control. It is the
seat of all automatic behavior, and it doesn't like to make changes that easily.

But there is a way to get past that, which is almost like a Trojan horse.

Take just one small step in the direction of that goal,
and suddenly you're bypassing the inertia in your brain.

If you try to force your way into 10 steps or 100 steps, your subconscious will start to fight that
change.

But if you make the change really small, the brain won’t even notice. The change goes
unnoticed into your behavior system, and over time it becomes automatic.
How to create momentum

● Use small steps
● Use mini habits
● Make forward progress

Over time you’ll create massive momentum.
Keeping the momentum going

Motivation i s the key to keeping the momentum.

How do we keep that motivation?
1. Reward yourself when you start executing on these mini habits.
2. Make progress visible.

So whenever you do something, mark it on a calendar or somewhere in your journal so that you
can see your progress again and again, no matter how small the progress might be.

www.2000books.com
Just the fact that you're doing your daily work and you're consistently taking action makes the
progress visible and gives you a ton of motivation in the face of all the challenges.

Be happy, but never satisfied.
- Bruce Lee

The way to look at our long-term goals: We don't become satisfied and complacent. We just
need to be motivated so that we can continue to make forward progress, to beat the inertia in
our brain, and to create momentum in our lives.

Related Books:
● Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg

2) Goal Achievement
A 3-step process to make your goal achievement automatic:

1. I dentify your big goal (or dream / vision / habit).

● Have your goal very clear in your mind.

2. I dentify the next smallest possible action you can take on a daily basis.

● Don't go for the large actions.
● The daily aspect is crucial here, so pick out 1 small thing that you can do on a daily
basis.
● Example: Your big goal is to write a book.
○ What's the smallest little thing that you can do on a daily basis in order to
achieve this goal? Maybe it’s to write 100 words. Maybe it’s to write 1 page.
○ Just decide on the smallest thing that you can do consistently, without fail, on a
daily basis, in order to move this goal forward.

3. M ake progress visible.

This idea actually comes from stand-up comedian Jerry Seinfeld. When he was starting off as a
comedian, he understood very instinctively that in order to become a good comedian, he had to
write jokes every single day.

What he did was he started putting this activity on the calendar. He would write a joke each
day and then he would mark a cross on the calendar. And on and on it went.
www.2000books.com

What Seinfeld said about this is really crucial:

Don't break the streak.

No matter what, just do that bare minimum activity, the smallest thing that you decided to do
every single day. Write a joke every day. Write 1 page for your book every day. Record a video
everyday. Do 5 push-ups every day. And so on.

Whatever it is for you, just use this mini habits system and that will create momentum. Once
you have this big goal broken down into consistent daily actions you can take, you will start
seeing progress. Then you become unstoppable.

No matter what, observe the progress and don’t stop that forward momentum. In order to do
that, make your habits really small. That's where mini habits come into play.

You wouldn’t want to burden yourself with creating goals that are daily giant goals. It will be
really difficult to follow through on them.

Related Books:
● The 4 Disciplines of Execution by S
ean Covey, Chris McChesney, Jim Huling
3) Define Your Cues

In order to increase the speed of habit formation, we need to be very specific with our cues.

Hence, we need to clearly define our cues.

Cues are simply triggers for our habits.
Types of triggers:
● Time-based
○ Example: Doing something at 3 PM everyday. (Time cue: 3 PM)
● Activity-based
○ Example: When you’re done brushing your teeth, you drink water. (Activity cue:
brushing teeth)
● General
○ Example: Doing something 5 times a day.

www.2000books.com
These are different kinds of triggers in your mind, each indicating that you need to act on your
habit. You know you need to do something.

The more specific our cue is, the faster that habit will be formed.
How decision-making works

There are 2 states of decision-making:

1. Deliberative state
a. Weighing all the different options that are available to us
b. Picking the winning option that we are going to work on
c. Moving on to the implementation state.

2. Implementation state - I mplementing the task

In order to make our habits stick and to get stuff done, we need to be able to move to
implementation state ASAP.
Implementation intention
The specificity of the cues is what makes this implementation possible. It is the key factor in
extreme productivity with our implementation intentions.

If our cues are very specific, we're going to be able to move to the implementation state very
quickly. We're going to cut through all the deliberation and move right into implementing.

Anytime a cue is triggered, it notifies our brain, and that notification forces us to take action.
That's why this whole system is so powerful.

EXAMPLE: A morning ritual with specific cues

Task: Writing down your goals as soon as you wake up
Type of trigger: Activity-based
Activity (Cue): Waking up

In this ritual, as soon as you wake up, you write your goals no matter what. You don't go and
brush your teeth, you don't go and drink water, you don't do anything else. It's your time for
your specific task or goal.

This is an example of a specifically defined cue.
● Your goal is very clear in your mind.
www.2000books.com
● You know the cue is “when you wake up”
● There are no ifs and buts about it.
● There is no ambiguity about that cue.

An ambiguous version of this morning ritual

● You write your goals sometime after waking up, It could be within the next 2 hours, 3
hours, or whatever.

With a “ritual” like this, you will never get your task done.

Again, in order to form powerful habits really fast, have very specific cues for how that habit
will be triggered.

What is the specific cue that will take you into implementation ASAP? That's the key.

4) Habits and the Brain

This section talks about how our brain works and why we must build habits in order to do our
most important work.

Nearly 45% of our behavior is automatic and we don't have any control over it.

Even though we think we have willpower, willpower is a very limited resource. It's like a battery
-- it constantly runs out.

It is almost impossible to use willpower on a daily basis to do large quantities of our most
important work. That will make us run into willpower challenges on a daily basis.

Our prefrontal cortex, which is the decision-making part of our brain, has to fight this constant
battle against the automated behavior part of the brain. It's very difficult for the prefrontal
cortex to win that battle on a daily basis.

The only option we really have: Automate our behavior

The key to automation: R epetition

Repetition is the language of our subconscious mind. If we repeat a certain task over and over
again, that will lead to automation. It becomes embedded in our brain.

www.2000books.com
The thing about our brain: It’s always resisting change.

Hence in order for us to be able to get it to do something and in order for us to change and to
do our most important work, we have to create this repetition.

What we are able to create with repetition: Habits

Initially it feels like the changes are very small. They would feel miniscule, like nothing is
happening. But the truth is that every little change and every effort we make in building our
habit counts.
Habits compound over time

As you repeat the habit again and again, it builds its own momentum. The habit then becomes
too difficult to break.

So we have to initially use our willpower and our prefrontal cortex to repeat this behavior.

In order to do our most important work, we must create habits around it. There's no other way
around it. We must create habits in order to propel ourselves forward.
www.2000books.com

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How does the author suggest creating momentum for goal achievement?

What are the two states of decision-making and how can we move quickly between them?

Mini Habits

Smaller Habits, Bigger Results

KEY POINTS COVERED IN THIS SUMMARY:

1) Creating Momentum and Motivation

How our brain works

How to create momentum

Keeping the momentum going

A 3-step process to make your goal achievement automatic:

3) Define Your Cues

How decision-making works

4) Habits and the Brain

Habits compound over time

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