“How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” We should rethink this African proverb more often: it does not invite people to eat elephants but uses them as a metaphor to say something much deeper. How do you deal with the most important challenges? One step at a time. Reducing them into smaller steps and actions because little by little you can do what you cannot do at once. After all, how have we always told you that you prepare a race? Following the charts and training, adding one brick at a time to the building of preparation.
Habits and behaviors
Let’s make a distinction right away: habits are the bites you give the elephant, and behaviors are the elephant. You cannot change ingrained behavior without small changes to the way you live. For this to assume daily habits is essential: “getting used to” something means what in fact? If you think about it, it mainly means “doing certain things more easily, without thinking too much about it.” Having understood the difference between habits and behaviors and realized that you can change the latter only by introducing the former in small doses, let’s see how to do it.
One step at a time
If you think about it, you started running little by little. With each new outing you added a little more road and made a little less effort. When the distance that at first seemed insurmountable became normal you realized that you could lengthen it or travel it faster. The habit has been to run every two, three days, but the behavior that has allowed you to build has been, for you, momentous: you have changed physically, you have begun to pay more attention to what you eat and drink, you have realized the importance to you of movement. This philosophy can be applied to many other things in your life. There is a method called“Two-minute Habits” that has just that purpose. It starts from the premise that small habits change behavior and is based on a twofold assumption:
- If it takes you less than two minutes to do something, do it now
- When it becomes a habit, it will take you less and less time to do it
How many things that you can do in a few minutes do you keep procrastinating because you don’t feel like it? We are talking about two minutes! What could be two minutes? The ones you wait at the traffic light for it to turn green. Those you employ to see pictures on Instagram. And so on. You always have two minutes if you think about it. You have to choose things that you would normally procrastinate endlessly and take very little time to do and do them right away! Do you want some examples? Put dirty dishes in the dishwasher immediately after eating. Read a random Wikipedia entry to learn something new. Responding to an email. Looking at the correspondence. There are dozens of things you can do in a short time. You just have to do them. On the plus side, the more frequently you do them, the easier it will be to do them in less time. “The first step is always the hardest,” and this is so true for habits as well. It is not difficult to do certain things but it is very difficult to start doing them. Going back to what was said earlier though, if it only takes you a few minutes it’s worth a try, right?
One more thing
This method was created to increase productivity and was explained by its creator David Allen in his book“Getting Things Done” as a principle for doing more things and doing them consistently to change and improve certain behaviors. There is another aspect of this system that is fascinating and that is the gratification mechanism it generates. Much of the frustration we experience every day comes from not being able to complete things we need to do. Often it is precisely these kinds of activities that take only a few minutes of your time. Bringing an action to fruition is like the sugar you give a horse after it has done what you asked it to do: a reward. If not completing things you have to do generates frustration, completing them gives a sense of fulfillment to the mind. Because we often have a heroic view of our lives, we think that true gratification comes only from performing glorious deeds: improving one’s personal best or earning a million or climbing a mountain. Instead, you can be satisfied even doing smaller things: like those things that take you two minutes. You can also see it from another point of view: changing some habits will change a more general but big behavior. In short, you will be more gratified by the fact that you have started, carried out and completed many small things. Personally, I don’t see it as a system to do more things or not only-I see it as a way to get more gratification. In the end you may not have discovered the cure for cancer or painted the Sistine Chapel, but you will generally be more serene and fulfilled. Two minutes at a time. (Photo by Ocean Ng on Unsplash)