Small Habits, Big Results
We often concern ourselves with the bigger picture, the end goal. But what about the habits that act as a catalyst towards the end goal?
Psychological Effect
By focusing on small meaningful tasks consistently, we develop a variety of hobbies. Hobbies can be productive and counter-productive; dealing with the former, if we were to actually gear ourselves with strong positive habits, we’d find ourselves more likely to reach a desired result.
We as human beings love immediate results, so when we work on long tasks our minds are wired to the idea that perhaps “this may not work’”, “what if this happens….?”, we tend to really adopt a negative outlook or perspective on fulfilling a project or task as a result of pessimism, that is only an indication of how we desire short-term results.
And how do we psychologically elucidate on this? its the effect of Dopamine, a neuro transmitter associated with pleasure and reward, so we tend to find that short-term goals often provide more immediate gratification, which releases dopamine, this influences the brain to gain similar rewards as a result.
Leveraging Opportunity
Knowing the ins and outs of how our brain and mind works, we can actually focus and sort of tweak the way we usually respond to changes, by making positive changes for positive results. What do i mean by this? By taking advantage of dopamine release.
You see since small mundane tasks can influence dopamine release, why not gear positive habits to trigger and influence the brain for more productivity?
Undoubtedly the world has reached a point, where we absolutely love scrolling on Tik-Tok , watching youtube shorts, scrolling through reels , these are again mostly very counter-productive tasks which usually delay reaching the end goal or result and a lot of time is wasted on such filth.
So, one of the best ways to actually do this is by force. As harsh as it sounds, it’s one of the best approaches personally. I’d often find my self in the same shoes, the same repeated set of events affecting me as a result of these platforms, so i decided to completely detox myself from the Time-Squandering platforms (at least for a period of time)
And i noticed The Best Results…
The way that i approached this was by focusing on deep learning and consistently rewarding myself along the journey. It’s important that you don’t make your distraction the means of your reward, as you would find yourself in the same shoes of procrastination and counter-productivity again.
Look for an alternative which is equally rewarding, this way you develop a habit which is actually Productive. Your mind is now focused and has developed a strong inclination to this habit, as a result of the short term rewards you reach along the way. It’s a very smart hack!
Aligning Small Habits To Bigger Results
There’s many ways to actualize aligning small habits towards the end goal. You have to really identify , what sort of habits exactly contribute towards positive results. Perhaps you see a goal that has its benefits in the short term but in the long term it maybe redundant or even vice-versa.
And one of the best ways to do this simply, is the trial and error method, the advantage of the trial and error method thought it has it set of drawbacks in this case, is that despite the fact that you may have some fallout with regards to the time spent in identifying the right goals.
You actually gain a lot of insight on many different habits, which you experiment along the way. This results in developing a strong sense of perspective and understanding of what habits are truly strong and effective and what habits are weak and ineffective in the long run.
The best aspect of this is that if you do not have a single end-goal, your discovery of habits that are redundant to one goal, may actually be effective in other contexts, so its mostly a win-win situation since your only focusing on positive habits which have some sort of positive result, whether it affects one particular result or not.
Another approach which is actually very ingenious, is Building on existing routines. Whether we follow a set of tasks or routine or not, there are many tasks that we “routinely” do, so why not capitalize on them?
If you are inclined to a sip of coffee every morning, and you have the plan or desire to start reading in the short term for long term results, do it right after your morning coffee! This way you actually make it a lot easier for your mind to associate Reading with Drinking Coffee every morning. Try it for a set period of time , and you will find your body now desiring this, due to it transforming into a small productive habit.
If you usually shower every single morning, head outside for a short walk, even it takes about less than half an hour. Doing this you gear your body towards being in a more active state, and cut back on the laziness that you’ve developed as a result of short-term mundane hobbies you were inclined to.
If you usually use your phone hours before sleeping as a lot of people do, ditching the phone for reading a short article or interesting novel can actually change your life for better. This results in developing a stronger mindset and is one of the best ways to negate those dull mornings as a result of a lack of sleep.
Nowadays, there are fortunately many tools, applications and incentives to beat mundane habits, we’ve seen this with the app Lock&Stock (based in the middle east region), if you havent heard of it ; certainly worth the shot. The app rewards you for simply locking your phone daily and you compete with others for locking the phone based on the duration of inactivity.
Undoubtedly, as you’ve seen, the ball is in your court to choose the right way to prioritize the right habits for better results. As we’ve explored, short term habits do have a very strong impact on reaching an end-goal much better than solely focusing on long-term tasks with no sense of reward actively. So try experimenting some of these methods and hopefully you’d find yourself in a routine of strong small positive habits eventually!
