1 Tiny Habit That Ends Procrastination

Waiting for “the perfect time” is a sneaky way to stay exactly where you are. Then I share one of the most underestimated tools in coaching and behavior change: Minimum Viable Habits. I tell you why this works so well psychologically: consistency builds self-trust, strengthens self-efficacy, and makes it easier to show up again tomorrow. We also get practical with examples from real life and clients, including the kind of gradual consistency that can lead to major results like significant 3...

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  Hey guys and welcome back to another episode of Change Wired Podcast. My name is Angela Sharina. I'm your host, I'm your partner in personal and collective transformation, your master health, sleep, stress management, recovery, nutrition, executive coach 360, and just someone who is really passionate about feeling our best, looking our best and doing our best, and most importantly, enjoying this beautiful life that we are all given to the fullest. Today, I opened up, you know, now these days I have this routine in the morning to open up certain social media accounts

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  that I know I'm gonna bring into my day some beautiful, inspiring, motivating words or images or videos that are gonna help me to tune up my own vibe, so I get to enjoy my day a little bit or a lot more. And today's account that I'm gonna be highlighting is Case of Case Kenny. You can look him up on Instagram or maybe other social media, and he has a company which is called Optimist, and his account, which has 1.5 millions of followers on Instagram, is all about optimism.

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  And one of the messages that was on his social media today was about how one of the most important things in life is no matter what life brings to you, choosing to enjoy the right to our best ability, even when things don't work out. And it's something that I'm definitely working on. We all have our challenges and not all the days are gonna be our best days or the days that we would like to have. But it is very important for our own wellbeing to learn how to still have an inside smile and make ourselves feel good again, no matter

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  what the day brings. Case Kenny, check him out on Instagram, not for him, for you. So you get to feel better by focusing your mind on brighter, better, more inspiring things. Besides that, today we are talking about a very underestimated concept and habit, and it's sort of like meta habit that helps you to do better on all of the other habits and do more of them. It's such an underestimated concept in coaching, in

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  behavior change, and definitely, if not the most favorite, then one of my favorite ones, because it's so effective, it's so simple, and we hear and see it everywhere, and we don't believe that it actually works. It took me like a decade to actually try it and see how effective it is. And I'm gonna tell you what it is exactly, but by the end of this podcast, you're gonna have one very, very simple, easy to use tool that is applicable to every area of growth and improvement in your life, from health to weight loss to your learning and your career and your

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  business and your personal growth and development. So one simple tool that is so effective and so underestimated. Today, I wrote a blog, "How my clients stop procrastinating on reading, learning, meditating, eating better, going to the gym, doing fitness, accidentally, very often, losing 30 kgs in two years and achieving all the goals they wanted, that feel like they've been cheating the whole day, because it doesn't seem like a lot of work at all."

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  From a coaching conversation, a client told me, "I keep postponing and postponing my learning, reading, getting through the scores. I think I need to start smaller. I'm always waiting for this perfect moment when I have all the time I need." Guys, how many of us are doing the same, waiting for this mythical perfect moment, this mythical perfect time, when we'll have all the time that never actually shows up? Last night, Duolingo, you know, this app, I don't know if you've used it before, but it's the learning languages app, Duolingo told me that I've spoken, this is the new thing they're doing to motivate their users to

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  come back to the app. So Duolingo told me that I've spoken 6,407 words in Italian in the last year. And most nights last year,

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  all I gave it was five minutes. My grand plan was, of course, a lot bigger than that. I planned to do 30 minutes at least four times a week and every day, something. Did I fall short of my brightest, most optimistic expectations? You bet. Do 6,407 words still count? Absolutely. Sorry for my French. Is five minutes a night going to get me to fluent Italian as fast as it could? No, but it's not a priority right now with me. I don't have a

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  deadline and I'm fine with some progress. And it's so much easier to keep going when you're not breaking your streak, when you can still see the progress. And you end up doing more on the days you can, instead of dreading this moment of starting, because you've been out of it for so long. And it's true with Italian, it's true with the gym, it's true with your fitness, with your diet, with your reading, it's true with learning, improving, getting better at anything. My most successful clients, guys, are the ones who accidentally,

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  quote unquote, lose 30 kgs over two years of gradual, consistent work. They build so much consistency by focusing on these tiny little steps that they can barely notice. They can do on any day of the week, month or year, they build so much consistency that those 30 kilos become a side effect. To some of them, in their own words, it feels like cheating, because you seemingly do so little and you get everything you ever wanted.

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  MVH. Introducing my favorite concept in coaching, guys. One I myself underestimated for years, for like a decade. Minimum viable habits, MVH. Something so small, it feels like no work at all, like you do nothing, like you're cheating. Just a decision to make it happen. For a long time, I couldn't get behind this advice I kept hearing on social media from entrepreneurs and different thought leaders. This advice of like, commit to reading five minutes a day. And I thought to myself, you're not going to get through much in those

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  five minutes. Like, what's the point? Why bother? Or sending five messages a day to people who could do business with me? Or coming back to writing, even in micro doses, a single 140 character line on Twitter? Or eating one extra piece of fruit a day? A vegetable? Or showing up for a five minute walk, five pushups of five bodyweight squats, when I did not want to do anything, instead of a full workout, just doing those five pushups? Then I started actually following the advice, and I don't remember why exactly it happened or why I decided to give it a try. Maybe it was the only thing I had, just those five minutes. I couldn't imagine

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  myself doing more. I was so busy and overwhelmed in life. And the magic started working on me. You show up for the practice and your streak grows, your brain registers the consistency and decides, hey, it must be important if we're doing it every day, isn't it? Which makes showing up the next day even easier.

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  And then you get confident and proud. You showed up like you said you would. You build self advocacy, self trust, self accountability. Instead of that creeping feeling of being a procrastinator, not doing it again and again and again. It spills into every other area of your life, guys. And you still get progress, however tiny. Five minutes of reading is one idea more than you had without it. And it's so much easier to keep going. And one day, you can't help but do more. Which makes the progress compound and over time turns you into the person and the results that you want.

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  Results that you get to keep because the consistency is already there. For the longest time, I couldn't get consistent with flossing my teeth. Then somebody told me to try flossing just one tooth. And I was skeptical. Maybe that actually, when I started this whole minimum viable habit thing. I actually decided to floss one tooth a day. And that was several years ago. I now floss the whole mouth after each meal and after brushing my teeth. I'm like, I'm obsessed with that now. That's the magic of minimum viable habit. So, the question to you guys.

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  What's one tooth you've been avoiding flossing because it feels too small to matter? And there is some magic in it. For the longest time, I thought it was some BS advice, you know, just to make yourself feel good. But it actually works. And not just for me and flossing my teeth. Or my Italian and 6,407 words more than without those five minutes. It didn't just work for me, it worked for my clients who lost up to 30 kgs in two years without seemingly trying and just showing up. You see, when you commit to showing up, after a while, you can't help but start thinking.

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  You know, might as well do a little bit more, a little bit more, and a little bit more. And then, because you've been consistent, even with small actions, you just never stop. It's so much easier to add on top of what you're already doing than stop and start and stop and start and stop and start. You know, what happens over, I don't know, a month or holidays or vacations with people. They're like, oh, I've not been going to the gym and now I feel out of shape. And now I don't have a routine and now it's even so much harder. And I feel like completely out of place and out of my fitness and yada, yada, yada. And then you also don't have this like self trust, self accountability that this time you're actually gonna stick with it.

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  Because you know that if you make it too big, you're not gonna stick with that. And this whole thing happens and then you never get to the kind of person who does fitness, learning, reading, meditating consistently. And because you're not that kind of person, it's gonna be so much harder to actually get any progress with that. Obvious, sounds obvious, but it doesn't sound that obvious that the small thing, this minimum viable habit. This smallest possible action can actually do that much magic until you give it an honest try.

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  So, my hope and wish and desire for you guys is to pick a habit that you've been procrastinating on. And make it really, really, really, really tiny. To the extent that you can't help yourself but do it every day. Put it on your calendar, it's very important when you're gonna do it. For me, Italian is every, when I finish everything about 6:30 to 7:00 PM, when I start my learning and reading. Just before reading my book, I do five minutes of my Italian, which usually ends up a couple of lessons on Duolingo. Yes, on some days, now I'm thinking about taking a course and going to school.

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  But without those five minutes, that would never happen. Because Italian would be already out of my mind, somewhere, you know, distant memory. That it was one thing that I wanted to do at some point in my life. So, my challenge to you is, today is August 31st, soon it's gonna be September. For the months of September, choose one thing that you've been procrastinating on. Create a minimum viable habit, something so small that you can't miss. Put it somewhere in your day, on top of the habits that you already do, which is called habit stacking. And then decide you're gonna make it.

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  And again, the, the, the most important thing is make it so, so, so, so tiny that you cannot not do it. That it feels like so little work. And that would be amazing if you also let me know what that habit is. Either on Instagram, Angela Brain Body Coach, Angela Brain Body Coach. Or connect on LinkedIn, Angela Sharina. My account is linked in the show notes. And happy September. Until next time, keep growing one minimum viable habit at a time.