Tiny Habits, and the Default and Intended Futures They Create

A look at the ‘tiny habits’ that create our default futures.

Photo by Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

Tiny habits come in two forms; unconscious and conscious.

The unconscious tiny habits you use everyday that are creating your default future for you.

The tiny habits you consciously use everyday are ones that, when you choose wisely, will help you create the intended future you want for yourself.

Your Intended Future’s Key Components

1. Conscious Awareness: Your conscious awareness of the feelings and judgements you have about your life and its various aspects.
2. A Tiny Habits List: An explicit listing of your existing tiny habits, rituals, and routines. Especially the ones you think play a part in creating the pieces and parts of your life that you’re dissatisfied with.
3. A Commitment: A conscious decision you make and share with people you’ve chosen to ‘witness’ your ongoing efforts to take hold of your life.
4. A Playful Attitude: The willingness to adopt a playful approach to your change effort. Including an acknowledgement that you will not be able to predetermine results and outcomes of the new tiny habits you’re experimenting with.
5. Tiny Habits Experiments: A series of daily, weekly, and/or monthly experiments.
6. Judgemental Reviews: The End-of-Day Reviews you conduct each evening just before you go to sleep.
7. Celebratory Acknowledgements: The heartfelt End-of-Day Celebrations you do each evening just before your go to sleep.

The Key Takeaways

There are five suggestions to take away from this ultra-short thought paper:

1. Your days are full of tiny habits. Most of these habits are rituals you’re not aware of; they’re that deeply embedded in your life. They’re small little snowballs which, as they’re rolling along, get bigger and bigger, turning themselves into habit that are shaping and driving the character of all your tomorrows.
2. The seven components listed just above can, if you want them to, be the blueprint you can use to transform your existing tiny habits into a more fulsome set of habits that help you create the intended future you’re hoping for.
3. Turning a blind eye to you unconsious tiny habits is easy to do. Continue living your life just as you have been up until now. No fuss, no mess. Just continue putting one foot in front of the other.
4. Or, you can take charge of your life by doing six things: (1) Make a list of the first three routines you implement every morning; (2) For one week, think about these routines, paying attention to what you’re thinking and feeling; (3) At the beginning of the second week, somewhere in the middle of your morning routine, insert any kind of new tiny habit; (4) Take notes about your thoughts and feeling, especially any strong reactions, good or bad you have after inserting your new routines; (5) In the third week, take some time to evaluate what you’re learning; and (6) Set aside one hour to both evaluate your learning experiences and develop for yourself the new set of tiny habits you want to use every morning to start creatng for yourslef your new intended future.
5. Implementing these tiny habit stepls is easy. Especially if you make them part of your early morning wake up routine.