One Thing at a Time
Do you have a dozen changes you want to make in your life? When I start coaching and mentoring someone, they often come to me with a long laundry list of changes they want to implement in their lives. Bad habits reinforce one another – if you’re not getting any exercise, you also don’t eat well, and waste time on streaming services, and get too little sleep, and don’t get things done, etc., etc.
But changing one thing for the better doesn’t magically affect the rest. That’s why it’s easy to drift into an unsatisfactory life, but hard to get out.
Start with one thing, but make a plan for the others. I advise people to get a habit-tracking app and set a start date for one thing they want to change. But also register the start date for the next thing you want to change, two weeks out. And the third thing, four weeks out. In that way, your app will start reminding you to do the one thing you committed to and ramp up reminders for the others over the next few months. Most people cannot make another change until they have spent at least two weeks anchoring the previous one.
Change one thing at a time.
Make Your Task a Habit
If you have a large task to complete and it doesn’t easily break into components, make it a daily habit.
My digital photo catalog contains 68,255 images right now. Some are tagged and evaluated, many are not. I have created a habit of working a little on cleaning up my photo collection every day. That means I feel I’m progressing towards my goal of having everything organized, even though there is still a long way to go.
For me, it works to have a habit-tracking app that reminds me not to “break the chain” every evening if I haven’t gotten around to a little photo sorting during the day. But you can also establish a habit by piggybacking it onto something you already do.
The difference between feeling in control and feeling overwhelmed by large tasks is whether you are moving towards your goal or are standing still. Move.