Start with a ridiculously small goal

With a pen in hand and a notebook on the table, planning new daily routines is easy and exciting, like watching home videos of a future self who’s cooler and lives out a perfect daily schedule.

How the daily routine looks in real time is usually much different. Some new plans run smoothly, many change course, most never get off the ground.

Motivation and inspiration can only carry a new habit so far.

A written plan is important but useless unless realistic and acted upon. I’ve had to teach myself that lesson over and over.

Instead of finding the motivation or waiting for the time to be right, strengthening the “get it done muscle” is what can help you turn the corner on starting and keeping new habits.

The get it done muscle is how the decision-making part of the brain overrides the analytical pathways that might question, doubt, or delay.

It doesn’t involve a convincing argument or references to reasons for motivation. It doesn’t even join the conversation.

It’s merely a switch that is turned on when activated by effort and repetition.

Like a real muscle, it has memory that becomes deeply ingrained with practice.

The get it done muscle applies to all acts, and is strengthened or weakened by any individual act.

The concept of what you do is what you get good at doing applies acutely to the get it done muscle.

How can you strengthen this muscle and use it to form positive and lasting habits?

Start with a ridiculously small goal.

Pick an easy, arbitrary 7-day goal, like I want to write down the time when I wake up for 7 days straight.

(Choosing a trivial, meaningless task removes pressure and makes it easier to practice the mechanics of the process.)

Stick to your natural goal-setting process when planning it out. Maybe that looks something like:

• Set a start date and the terms of the goal. Hand write it and store where you will see it often. E.g. I will do [simple test habit] at [time] starting [start date] for seven days.

• Get everything you need to make the goal happen. Keep it simple.

• Create some stakes around achieving or not achieving the goal. Small, of course, but meaningful.

And get started. Remind yourself of the goal a few times a day, complete the exercise each morning and continue for seven days. Easy, right?

The activity itself should take 30 seconds and little effort, and reminding myself a few times a day could be as simple as leaving the slip of paper on my kitchen counter. Let’s see how I do with a simple task like this.

If I can’t stick to it, I might try working on my “get it done” muscle before seriously considering any new lifestyle habits.

If I do succeed, I know I’m at least capable of setting some kind of goal and achieving it, which is something worth celebrating.

What this small exercise does is create a practice session for the full process of setting and sticking to a goal, even if that goal is ridiculously small and meaningless.

It’s especially instructive because it is meaningless.

The honeymoon period of motivation only lasts so long and when it fades it's hard to find it again. As time goes on, in the deciding moments of “just do it” or “don’t do it,” it can be hard for motivation alone to carry the full weight of decision-making.

Having the strength to “get it done,” even when there’s no motivation, is what lends to long-lasting habits.

That’s what this exercise is about. It strengthens the “muscle” of completing a task on the list.

After a successful seven days, add a real habit to your list and repeat the process. Maybe you will find that when it comes time to do the new habit - cook the dinner, hit the gym more, walk after lunch - it’s a little bit easier to just get it done.