The answer is so important, I’ll say it three times in different ways: Pick the easiest one. Pick the one you are most sure you can do. Pick the one that feels like no big deal.
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In order to design successful habits and change your behaviors, you should do three things.
- Stop judging yourself.
- Take your aspirations and break them down into tiny behaviors.
- Embrace mistakes as discoveries and use them to move forward.
With my underwear drawer still open, I realized I’d found my answer: behavior sequencing. You simply need to figure out what comes after what. Eureka!
In the previous chapters, you’ve already been working on Behavior Crafting even though I didn’t use that term. You have already learned how to:
- Identify a lot of behavior options (chapter 2)
- Match yourself with behaviors that will lead to your aspiration (chapter 2)
- Make the behavior easier to do (chapter 3)
You can practice this skill by answering one question: What is the tiniest habit I could create that would have the most meaning?
Across the study, we can extract a more general pattern: When lost in the fog, simply take what looks like the next best step. Not a big step, but a small step. Then reassess, step again, reassess, step again, reassess, step again. Keep moving in steps. And one day, the fog will begin to lift and the cumulative effect of all those steps will become clear.
The lives in our study show the great utility of moving in small steps when otherwise befuddled and uncertain. You don’t need to have the answers for what to do with the rest of your life. You just need to begin simplex stepping. You might get a long way down the road before you even know where you are going.