Minimum Viable Change
The basic idea of minimum viable change
- what is the smallest thing you can do, consistently for 30 days
- small = so small you would typically not do it, because why would anyone even do that? (purpose of smallness revealed shortly)
- consistent = every.single.day, which is why we want it to be small, we are going for something we could do forever (baseline examples include waking up, using the bathroom, and eating, so we’ll be adding something that we probably should be doing but just don’t because of { reasons } — waking up, eating, bathroom, those generally happen no matter what and we can increase our no-matter-whats
Let’s experiment with flossing.
🦷 Flossing one tooth for the next 30 days
Experiment — for someone who currently does not floss, but principles apply to anything:
- immediately get a piece of floss
- put it in between desired teeth
- take a photo (you’re not showing anyone, this is just for you)
- you’ve done the first day 🎉
- repeat this first thing in the morning, as soon as you get to the bathroom sink
note — you’re only putting this in between ONE set of teeth, NO MORE
I cannot stress the importance of keeping it to one.
Imagine this scenario: you’ve never flossed consistently.
In 30 days, you wake up and want to floss.
How might we build that want in a sustainable way?
In theory, by keeping the number so low, we’d be able to get it done no matter what (i.e., so sustainable that you roll your eyes 🙄).
We are also focusing on building up the daily practice and not on the end results. First, consistency is being strengthened, then we can start slowly improving our practice.
Why flossing?
If you haven’t flossed in a while, it will likely cause discomfort and varying degrees of bleeding (ranging from zero 👉 sink full of blood).
Flossing is in the sweet spot of having a big impact, being relatively easy to do, and also not being ‘fun’ to start.
Once you’re past the bleeding gums, it actually becomes an enjoyable experience. So much so that you’ll feel weird not flossing a couple of times a day.
How might we increase the daily flossing habit (high-level) & make it sustainable?
- doing very small, consistent things > one inspired burst that can’t be sustained.
- by keeping the number ridiculously small, you’ll be used to the daily practice & actually want to increase the amount at the end of 30 days
- if you can build up the habit of flossing, you’ll be able to build the habit for anything
general framework:
- decide what you want to want
- determine what the minimum start of that ‘thing’ is
- do that minimum, no more, for the next 30 days
- continue slowly but surely adding to this new ‘thing’ that you do now
final thoughts
it’s not magic, but there can be a big gap between the micro-actions and habits we do daily, and how those decisions add up (or don’t) over the years.
i’ve got hundreds of partially-written posts and ideas for movies and apps sitting across dozens of notebooks and tucked inside of a mess of markdown files. that is where they’ve been hanging out, for years, but that was never the end-goal.
my minimum viable change was to pick something and actually publish it, today.
notes:
- for more on thinking about small habits James Clear’s book atomic habits
- for more on not breaking-the-chain
- reference for my doodle & information on flossing
- ‘how might we questions’ nngroup article
- we are trying to avoid short motivated bursts of ‘doing a thing,’ only to not have it stick. this is a process and we are attempting to try something new, which is to actually desire to do the ‘thing’ instead of setting up systems to brute-force our way through it. Imagine going from a bummer, bloody, ~semi yearly experience to a daily practice that you’re looking forward to.
- this is also for you and a habit you want. if someone thinks that doing only one pushup a day is stupid, fuck that person (or at least don’t tell them what you’re doing). you’ll go from zero pushups a day, to someone that wakes up looking forward to some exercise.
