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The first rule of microresolutions is it's easy. You absolutely have the power to keep
it. And why do you have the power to keep it? It's reasonable, it's limited and you
know that you can actually follow through.
So the way to start making a microresolution is, you know, to do kind of what you start
with as a New Year's resolution which is to focus on some area of self-improvement. So
I think clutter is a big one for people. So let's say it's clutter. You could have lots
of different kinds of clutter. You could have a cluttered desk. You could have an unmade
bed. You could have stuff from your medicine chest, you know, hanging out around your sink.
All these things are clutter. So you wouldn't say as you might in your New Year's resolution,
"Oh, I'm gonna get rid of all this clutter." Instead you're going to figure out how to
observe your behavior in one area of clutter and reengineer your behavior so that your
behavior's different and you can sustain it forever. Sustain it forever.
So the very first thing in a microresolution is you have to believe it's absolutely achievable,
no excuses resolution. It is so easy you wouldn't be able to live with yourself I you couldn't
do it, right? So if I look at all the clutter that many of us are surrounded by and you
take the desk -- you take a look at the desk and you observe your behavior as you interact
with your desk and do things. So let's say one of the things you do at your desk is you
come in with a stack of mail and you dump it on the pile of mail that you already have
on your desk and you say, "Gee, that's a really big stack." And it gets bigger all the time.
What's a shift in behavior I could make so that I don't have that part of clutter so
badly on my desk.
You could decide I am not bringing any mail into the house until I cull it. Instead of
bringing the stack in, getting a giant stack and then going through it later and throwing
out all the crap, I'm gonna do that before I ever bring it in the house. And you will
probably bring in one quarter of what you would otherwise. And already you have something
more manageable to do. That's one thing you might do. Another thing you might do is if
you have lots and lots of notepads, different kinds of notepads everywhere and some of your
notes are in one or another, you could say, "Okay, you know, I just really want one place
to go for notes. I'm gonna establish one place for this note taking habit and I'm gonna go
after it until I've nailed it."
And whatever the changes -- it seems small, it seems easy, but saying you're gonna do
something is not the same thing as doing it. Doing it once is not the same thing as always
doing it. It takes real discipline and single-minded purpose to make any behavioral shift. But
the good news is as that you get over that shift it's there forever. You'll never have
to think about it again. You'll stand and sort your mail without thinking it. You'll
always reach for the same notebook. And those are just a couple of examples. But all behavior
sort of gives way to that sort kind of analysis if you give yourself the space to think small.