The idea of picking up a new habit can be both exciting and a surprisingly significant source of friction — especially when we think to ourselves about all the ways in which our future behavior is going to radically transform.
Consider picking up the habit of reading for example.
It’s super easy to start. You can commit to reading one minute right now (see Tiny Habits by BJ Fogg).
But the moment you start telling yourself a story of how your one minute is going to scale to one hour, and not just one hour today but one hour every day for the foreseeable future. Somehow, somewhere along this thought process, the task of reading suddenly becomes significantly more daunting than it needs to be.
So daunting, in fact, that you might just not start all together.
Another source of friction is when we expect perfect commitment. After reading for 7 days in a row you might feel like a success, but if on the 8th day you don’t manage to read then — much like the sudden drop from the top of a roller coaster — you can go from feeling like a successfully changed person, to a failure.
Here are two perspective shifts to help remove these sources of friction:
- Focus on doing what’s meaningful today, never mind tomorrow. A lifelong habit of reading sounds…
