Tiny changes do matter
“Unwavering incremental change can create remarkable and monumental results.” ― Ryan Lilly
Recently, I heard on a Joe Rogan’s podcast a story I’ve heard before but can’t remember where. He talked about how if two boats are going in a parallel direction and one of them shifts 5 degrees, over the course of time that boat is going to be on a far different place than the other boat that is going on the same direction it’s always been going.
It’s easy to underestimate the effect small changes can have in our lives. We know that good habits can have a great impact on our future. If that’s the case, why is it so hard then?
Last year I decided to resume my Italian lessons on Duolingo. My father is Italian so I thought it would be a good idea to finally learn the language, maybe I’d like to go there one day with my family. Plus I like languages so no harm to be found.
The way Duolingo works is you take two lessons daily (by default, you can adjust that) to keep your streak. After a while, I got obsessed with keeping it alive and growing, plus I was working from English to Italian so I could practice both in one go (my first language is Spanish). Before I knew it I had finished the whole course and was just trying to get each lesson to the max level possible just to continue with the streak. Can’t say Italian comes as a 2nd language like English but I can defend myself pretty well, all by spending just 5 minutes each day. Now I’m working on German for a change.
In the book Atomic Habits, James Clear discusses how improving any aspect of your life by just 1% can have huge benefits in the long run. Like my example above, you can’t learn a language by studying 5 minutes one day just like you can’t lose body fat by going to the gym once every other week. But if you keep studying or working out daily you’ll find out that you’re not only closer to your goal but you’ll also develop a new, hopefully, good habit.
“Habits are the compound interest of self-improvement”― James Clear
Bad habits also benefit from incremental changes over long periods of time so caution is adviced when deciding on what kind of changes we are aiming for.
Getting out of bed 5 minutes earlier, working out for 10 minutes, reading a page of a book per day, all of those are small things we can do and the more we work on them the better results we’ll get.
Meditation is the habit I’ve been trying for years to achieve, mostly because I’m always trying to do it for 5–10 minutes on my first try. Doing it for 1 or 2 minutes per day is the way I’ll try to add meditation to my morning routine.
It’s just a matter of slow and steady progress, as Rocky Balboa said in the film Creed “One step at a time, one punch at a time, one round at a time”.
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