Day 7 of my transformation. For the video, click here.
For most of my life, I went about self-improvement completely backward. I would create the perfect system, launch it on the first day, and keep to that system perfectly. I would of course fail, usually on day 2 or 3. This led to a constant cycle of failure, self-hatred, and system reboots. After countless attempts at launching a new transformation in this manner, I finally realized that my approach was wrong. I needed to completely rethink my approach to self-improvement. That is when I came up with the idea of the least actionable task.
This idea is familiar, and I am one of many to consider it. Of course, once I came up with the notion, I started seeing this exact concept repeated everywhere. The simplicity of this idea had been staring me in the face for years, but I did not have ‘ears to hear.’ The idea is straightforward. When you attempt to start a new habit, start with the smallest amount of activity that you will actually do. There is no use in creating a program where you just will not do it. Instead, find the lowest form of the activity that is so ridiculously easy that you will actually do it.
This may feel embarrassing. I will be transparent here to demonstrate how silly yet paradoxically powerful this concept is. When I started running for the first time, I was overweight, and my doctor told me I needed to start getting in shape or things would go wrong. I remember looking in the mirror one morning at a conference and saying, really? That same morning, I decided to start running. I had no plan, clothes, shoes, or fancy running watches. I literally ran outside on a golf course in my dress shoes. I only made it about 50 yards. I decided I would run daily, and as I did so, I started really small. The 50 yards was about the distance to my mailbox, and that is what I would do. I left really early in the morning so no one would see me. I was this giant slow hippo gasping for breath as I finally reached my mailbox.
Fast forward to today. My running progress improved over three years, culminating in completing a 50-mile ultramarathon race in the desert. However, I was slowly falling apart due to some challenges, and now I am back to the beginning. That is embarrassing, to say the least. I have been trying for about 4 months to start running again, but I can no longer do 6 miles every morning at 7min/mile pace and a long run on weekends. The reality is that the mailbox is the least amount that I will actually wake up and do every morning. I find a nice chunk of humble pie to nibble on there, and then I can head back home.
I started that 7 days ago, and now I can finally back up to 1 mile. I realize I have the benefit of doing this before, so my progress is more rapid than it was years ago. This morning, I ran a mile. My children will recognize this as “pennywise.”
When I started, I created a 2-mile course in my neighborhood. I planned quarter-mile increments so that I could gauge my progress. I gave the mile markers notable names so that I could really feel like I accomplished something. The first one I called Pennywise. This is because I am afraid of clowns, and I am also scared of running. The mile marker happened to end at a rain gutter, so the name fit.
The point is to identify what you will actually do every day. Then, as you feel more confident in your habit, you can increase the load. That mailbox run became easy, pennywise became a silly stupid clown in a rain gutter, and a marathon became a walk in the park. This concept works because incremental progress is what your mind and body will adapt to. The adapt part is what we need to remember, and that is what takes time. We must be patient with ourselves, and we must only commit to what we will actually do. There is no sense in setting the bar so high that you just will not do the task. Small incremental steps are always better than doing nothing.
Then, how long do you keep going with the least actionable task? I have proven to myself that the formation of a habit occurs somewhere around the 90-day mark. Yes, that is right. 90 days. A 3-month cycle allows you to go through all the barriers that might come up in life. This cycle will allow you to experience various stages of your mental process and conditions in your environment. If I keep a habit for 90 days, I can maintain it forever. That means doing the most minor thing for only 90 days. You can increment the workload; that is acceptable. This will come naturally, and let it. Pretty soon, running to the mailbox will seem silly; you will add some more. After 90 days, you can get serious with a more concrete objective with steps for improvement. You will be ready then.
My advice for personal transformation is to identify something you want to be better at and then establish the least actionable task that you will actually do. Then, just get started. Every day.
