Peace of Mind Organizing

Setting the bar low

17 September 2010

I’m all for doing things well and keeping commitments. But sometimes, just a little bit of effort is better than no effort. And sometimes if you make a little effort, it can turn into more effort.

Case in point: I’m working with a friend and accountability partner to try to get back into the routine of doing Wii Fit Plus on a regular a basis. I’d lost that routine during a particularly busy time. And I’m hanging onto a couple of pounds as a result. So I committed to 20 minutes of Wii Fit a day, five days a week. I know, it’s not much. But it’s something and that’s better than nothing.

Well last night I just didn’t feel like doing it. I had time, I wasn’t exhausted, I just didn’t want to. But I knew I was going to have to tell that to my accountability partner. And I knew how important it was to just do a little in order to create that habit again.

So I told myself that I would do five minutes on the Wii Fit. That’s all. Just five minutes That didn’t seem too bad. So my interior whiner was placated. Once I got started, I had no problem doing the full 20 minutes.

This reminds me of Mark Forster’s trick of fooling your reactive mind by telling it you’re just going to do one little step. (“I’m not going to vacuum, I’m just getting out the vacuum cleaner.”) Once you do that first step, the resistance is gone and you do the task. I blogged about this in a June 2008 post called Getting Started.

So next time you find yourself resisting something that you feel you really ought to do (decluttering, for example), try lowering the bar. Tell yourself you’ll do it for an incredibly short period of time. Even if you stop after that short interval, you’ll have made some progress. And chances are good that you’ll actually keep going.

Tagged with: exercise, mark forster, motivation, routines

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