Thomas Rolley 00:00
minimum required habits, what are? What are these things? What's the minimum required habit? Well, I'm continuing with this journey into atomic habits.
And James clear, the author of that book, is very interesting.
He's actually bringing through an idea that I found to be quite powerful; I've experienced this, and most likely, you have as well.
And what He suggests is that the beginnings of habits are critical.
And the rest of the habit will flow and happen if I or if we just get that beginning habit done.
And this is very interesting.
So it means like, for instance, He gives the story of a famous dancer, I think her name was Twyla.
And her habit was to catch a cab in the morning; every morning, at 5:30 am, she'd get up, get into her gym gear, and catch a taxi.
And that was the end of the habit.
But after that taxi happened, it happened to take her to a gym.
And there, she trained for two hours every morning.
And it was very interesting because the habit was not the two-hour training; the habit was just to catch the cab.
If she literally got back in a cab and drove back home and got back into bed, the habits still counted as done.
You gave another analogy of a man who lost over 100 pounds just by going to the gym for five minutes.
Every day, go to the gym for five minutes, five minutes, five minutes, five minutes after while He started to say, Well, I'm going to I'm here, I may as well stay a little longer, stayed for seven stayed for 12 stayed for half an hour stayed for an hour lost 100 pounds.
What is interesting was the analogy that He gave.
And you might find this useful? Because I certainly do.
Sometimes I get very overwhelmed with the amount of work to be done and my hours of work; how am I even going to do this?
And that story in my mind will often prevent me from doing it, or I'm just like, ah, Netflix, ah, Facebook, ah, not the work.
But what He suggests is that habits should be thought of as if they are on-ramps to highways; when you get on the on-ramp to the highway, you then can go for a very long time, just off that single decision to get on the highway in the first place.
So you enter onto the on-ramp; that's the beginning of the habit.
And then the rest of it is the highway.
And this is a very powerful idea because it allows us to focus on just getting onto the highway, just getting the habit started.
And He gave the analogy that any habit could be reduced down down down smaller and smaller, simpler and simpler until it was no more than two minutes.
Meditate for two minutes, put on the gym clothes within two minutes, whatever the habit is that the long term one, running a marathon, getting a PhD making a million dollars, whatever it is, those habits are very difficult, but to reduce it down and say hey, I'm going to do a Facebook Live every day, I'm going to show up to the gym every day.
I'm going to study for two minutes every day.
Often, what I found, as you probably have if I can do the two minutes, you can do the two minutes, we can do the two minutes, and suddenly that opens up into half an hour, 45 minutes, maybe even 90 hours, 90 hours, 90 hours, 90 minutes.
You pull 90 hours of two-minute habits done. You do it really well.
But 90 minutes of a two-minute beginning.
And often, it's just enough to get started that the work appears far more before I've started it.
I begin with the two-minute habit get into the flow and off.
I go off; you go off. We go to get the work done.
Alright, that's all I got for you today.
I hope you're enjoying the series, continuing this journey into the relationship with systems and habits very similar, very, very similar.
Alright, look forward to seeing your next episode as we continue this journey into power systems create results.
See you then.
