The Minimum Viable Day

When all else fails, raise the minimum. The lowest common denominator is how much you accomplish toward your personal goals every day. It is quite true, that you will achieve more through incremental every day progress then by any single Herculean effort. Consequentially, when you are really struggling to make progress on anything then the one thing you should focus on is raising your minimum each day.

Of course, this assume that you have a minimum each day. If you do not, then you better establish one. This is not an easy process, but well worth the investment of commitment and time. When you have established a minimum threshold of what you will accomplish each day, no matter what happens, then you can at least guarantee that every day will move you a little towards your goals. If you do not have a minimum, then you could end up in a tail spin and your one day could turn to 10 days or 100 days of backsliding. Then all of your handwork toward an objective will be lost.

You can completely avoid this problem by establishing a minimum viable day (MVD). Decide right now, what your minimum is. What will you absolutely require of yourself each day to get done, despite the circumstance of what might be falling apart around you. Do you remember the Nike commercial where there is a major catastrophe going on in the world, the city is torn apart, buildings are crumbling and general havoc is going on. Then a door way opens, and a runner (decked out in Nike gear of course) emerges with headphones on and heads out for the morning run. That is the minimum day in a nutshell.

You cannot just create a minimum viable day (MVD) over night. You have to work on it for a long, consistent period of time. I have been working on such a concept for 721 days in a row. I have been building components of my MVD slowly over time. What started as 1 consistent habit has now built to 7. I have had it up to 10 at one point, but as I started to try to improve certain areas, I found that focusing on the 7 things for now was needed. I am working on adding my 8th item now. The point is, that when you build a habit into your daily routine, you start building a stronger and stronger MVD. Your base day, your base output, your progress will vastly improve as you alter the default benefit that you get from each day of life. Rather than having days where you go backward, everyday is forward. Rather then having nothing days, everyday is making incremental progress.

So many people get all freaked out when they have a bad day, something goes wrong, the stress kicks in. The reaction is to melt down a bit, bury your head in a gallon of ice cream or your drug of choice, binge watch a show that you will not remember in a week from now and generally have a bad attitude about life. This will persist, until you decide to pick yourself up and go on. This is not a disorder, this is just the way it is. I have talked to many, many people about this phenomenon. True, a bipolar person experiences this in the extreme, but everyone goes through it. The ups and downs of life are just part of the experience. Consequently, you must realize that the only way to make true progress, is by establishing a MVD that keeps you in the game, even on the bad days.

No more bad days is not a phrase for the Margarita loving parrot head, it is the mantra of the individuals that has developed consistent habits. When you have habits in your arsenal, you no longer have bad days because everyday you are producing something and everyday you are achieving habits. The thing about habits that you form, is that they will always be tied to your long term goals and objectives. People do not create habits just for fun, you always create a habit because you are trying to achieve something. Take a look at any habit that you might have. Ask yourself, if I keep that habit up for an extended period of time then what will happen to me? Sure enough, you will be able to visualize the result good or bad of a prolonged every day effort. If that is the case, then you owe it to yourself to be consciously in control of the habits that you form. Those habits will make up the MVD, and as a consequence decide what you are going to become.

So when you just feel like the day cannot get worse, spend some time thinking about the MVD that you would like to construct. Perhaps you can even spend some quality time thinking about the habit you would like to perform. Go even further, actually do the habit and call the day – Day #1. Resolve to get to Day #365 – somewhere along the way you will establish a minimum viable day and that will be well worth it.

Guy Reams