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Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results by [Stephen Guise]

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Stephen Guise

Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results Kindle Edition

by Stephen Guise (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.5 4,295 ratings

Book 1 of 2: Mini Habits

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A Worldwide Bestseller in 21 Languages!

Lasting Change for Early Quitters, Burnouts, the Unmotivated, and Everyone Else Too

When I decided to start exercising consistently 10 years ago, this is what actually happened:

I tried "getting motivated." It worked sometimes.
I tried setting audacious big goals. I almost always failed them.
I tried to make changes last. They didn't.

Like most people who try to change and fail, I assumed that I was the problem. Then one afternoon—after another failed attempt to get motivated to exercise—I (accidentally) started my first mini habit. I initially committed to do one push-up, and it turned into a full workout. I was shocked. This "stupid idea" wasn't supposed to work. I was shocked again when my success with this strategy continued for months (and to this day).

I had to consider that maybe I wasn't the problem in those 10 years of mediocre results. Maybe it was my prior strategies that were ineffective, despite being oft-repeated as "the way to change" in countless books and blogs.

I was right.

Is There A Scientific Explanation For This?

As I sought understanding, I found a plethora of scientific studies that had answers, with nobody to interpret them correctly. Based on the science--which you'll find peppered throughout Mini Habits--we've been doing it all wrong.

You can succeed without the guilt, intimidation, and repeated failure associated with such strategies as "getting motivated," New Year's Resolutions, or even "just doing it." In fact, you need to stop using those strategies if they aren't giving you great results. They don't work because they all require you to fight against your subconscious brain (a fight not easily won). It's only when you start playing by your brain's rules and taking your human limitations seriously--as mini habits show you how to do--that you can achieve lasting change.

What's A Mini Habit?

A mini habit is a very small positive behavior that you force yourself to do every day; its "too small to fail" nature makes it weightless, deceptively powerful, and a superior habit-building strategy. You will have no choice but to believe in yourself when you're always moving forward. The barrier to the first step is so low that even depressed or "stuck" people can find early success and begin to reverse their lives right away. And if you think one push-up a day is too small to matter, I've got one heck of a story for you!

Aim For The First Step

I've used the Mini Habits strategy to get into the best shape of my life, read 10x more books, and write 4x as many words. It started from requiring one push-up from myself every day. How ridiculous is that? Not so ridiculous when you consider the science of the brain, habits, and willpower. The Mini Habits system works because it's how our brains are designed to change.

Read Mini Habits now, and discover how smaller habits lead to bigger results!

Book 1 of 2

Mini Habits
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December 22, 2013
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4,295 global ratings

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Lady Quixote

New Year’s Resolutions Fail 92% of the Time. But Mini Habits WORKS

Reviewed in the United States on October 9, 2018

Verified Purchase

(This review was completely rewritten on December 26, 2018. Because WOW, Mini Habits has totally changed my life!)

According to the University of Scranton, Journal of Clinical Psychology (2012), New Year’s resolutions have an abysmal success rate of only 8%.

What this means, of course, is that 92% of all the New Year’s resolutions that will be made six days from now, are never going to happen. The majority of these resolutions will fall by the wayside within the first couple of weeks.

I was looking back over my old blog posts recently and I saw where I had made the declaration on New Year’s Day in 2016 that I was going to finish writing my memoir by the end of that year. And it never happened.

About 80% of us intend to write a book someday, according to what I have read. And, for the vast majority of people, that “someday” for writing a book never comes.

The first time I tried to write a story about my life, I was in my twenties. I thought I was ready to tell my real-life horror to healing story, but I wasn’t even close to being ready.

Today, four decades later, thanks to all the healing therapy that I have had in recent years, I know that I’m as ready as I will ever be to share my story with the world. But even so, writing my memoir is still very hard. It is all too easy, on any given day, to come up with one excuse after another for putting off writing. “I’ll do it tomorrow!”

But tomorrow never comes. All we have is today.

Sometimes, like when I made a determined New Year’s resolution, I would get all excited and write like my brain was on fire for several mega productive days in a row. But sooner or later, something always happened that seemed bigger than my ability to write, and I wouldn’t get any writing done that day.

Sometimes the problem might simply be a headache. At other times, I was just too tired to write. I might get some worrisome news from someone I love, or maybe see something on the national news that upset me. Some days I was too busy running errands, or doing laundry, or taking care of our rescue dogs.

There were also many times when I was planning to write a part of my story that was especially painful to think about, and on that particular day I would rather think happier thoughts and enjoy where my life is right now. For all of these and many other reasons, I kept setting my manuscript aside, intending to come back to it tomorrow, or next week, or next month — or next year.

This has been my reality for far too many years. Trying and failing, and trying and failing, and trying and failing again, to write a memoir. Even on those days when my writing was going great, I was rarely capable of keeping up the momentum for long. Usually, one solid week of writing every day was the best I could manage at a time. Which is pretty much the longevity of the average New Year’s resolution!

Writing so sporadically kills the continuity, too. I kept losing the “flow” in my writing. For this reason, even though I tried really hard to pick up where I had left off, I found that I couldn’t do it, after too many days of not writing had gone by. Which means I kept starting my memoir all over again. I haven’t kept count, but I probably did this hundreds of times.

More than anything that I may ever accomplish in this life, I want to finish and publish my memoir. Lord willing, I don’t want to take my story to the grave.

But I am not going to make another New Year’s resolution next week, only to fail before the month is out. And that’s okay, because I don’t need to make any more New Year’s resolutions to write my memoir. Why? Because 111 days ago, on September 7, 2018, I discovered an entirely new way of getting myself to write, every single day.

So far, this new way of building a daily writing habit is working perfectly for me. For the past 110 days, I have not missed a single day of meeting my memoir writing goal. (I haven’t done today’s memoir writing yet, which is why I say 110 days, instead of 111. But I have no doubt that I will meet my writing goal for today, before I go to bed tonight.)

I met my writing goal even on November 20, when my doctor told me that I had skin cancer and needed surgery right away. I met my writing goal on Thanksgiving, as we traveled to be with family. I met my writing goal on December 6, when I checked into the hospital and had surgery under general anesthesia. I met my writing goal on the day after my surgery, when I was in pain and feeling very woozy. I met my writing goal while my husband and I have been battling a miserable flu of some kind for the past couple of weeks. Through headaches, stomach aches, and coughing fits that almost made me pass out, I have met my writing goal every single day.

And then there was Christmas! That’s right, I met my writing goal on Christmas eve and on Christmas day.

When people came to visit, I met my writing goal. When we had places to go and errands to run, I met my writing goal. When I got some very bad news about my precious aunt, and when I read things in the news media that shattered my heart, I met my writing goal. Even when I was writing very hard things, I still met my writing goal. Regardless of what has been going on, even on the most challenging of days, I have met my writing goal every day for the past 110 days, without missing one single day.

I have never been able to do this before. It’s like a miracle — and yet, this method is completely natural — which is why it works so well!

This new way that I have found to reach my daily writing goal, doesn’t just work for writing. This method works for any kind of goal that you may want to implement in your life. Five days after I started my memoir writing goal on September 7, I added two daily exercise goals and one daily housework goal. And I haven’t missed any of those goals, either, since I started my three additional goals on September 12. For the past 105 days, through all of the ups and downs: cancer scare, surgery, being sick, bad news, and the holidays, I have met every one of my four daily goals, every single day.

Not only have I met my goals every day — on the vast majority of days I have actually exceeded my goals, usually by a tremendous amount.

With the exception of having the flu and my recent surgery — which turned out NOT to be cancer, yay! — this is the best my life has been, EVER. Thanks to all the planks I’m doing and the miles I’m putting on my exercise bike, my muscle tone is the best that it’s been in decades. Best of all, I have written so much further than I’ve ever written in my memoir before — and I am still going strong!

So — how is this even possible? When 92% of New Year’s Resolutions fail, when approximately 80% of us want to write a book and never do, and when the vast majority of exercise programs fall by the wayside within the first month — after all the years that I have tried, and failed, over and over again, to write a memoir and to get my muscles in better shape — HOW am I doing this?

Here’s how: I bought a book. I read it. And I did what it said.

I have read countless self-help, how to write, how to overcome writer’s block, and how to stop procrastinating books, within the past half century. And yet all of those books failed me, just like my New Year’s resolutions always failed.

But Mini Habits by Stephen Guise actually works.

Take it from an expert in trying and failing to meet an important goal: forget New Year’s resolutions. Whether your goal is getting in shape, cleaning up a terminally messy house, writing a book, pursuing higher education, or whatever you want to accomplish, if Mini Habits can work for me, I believe it can work for anybody.

What’s so different about Mini Habits? The science behind it, that’s what’s different. Mini Habits works, because this is the way our amazing brains were created to work.

Thank you for reading my review. God bless, and have a Happy Mini Habits New Year!

43 people found this helpful

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Ben Marlin

Mini Habits work

Reviewed in the United States on February 21, 2017

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Mini Habits work. Here's my proof:

For many years, I was a regular exerciser. My zeal for exercising ebbed and flowed, but I always did something on a regular basis to get my heart pumping. At my best, I walked to the gym in 25-degree weather - in shorts, because I'm not smart - and I ran several miles on the treadmill. I exercised even more when I had a gym in my apartment building. I felt great, and I never once questioned whether exercising was a worthwhile practice. It so obviously improved every facet of my life.

Then, a few years ago, I stopped. Maybe it was moving out of the building with the gym. Maybe work got busier. Maybe it was having a kid. Whatever the reason, my exercising habit dwindled and eventually disappeared outright. I could not find the time or - more importantly - the motivation to fit in a half-hour of exercise into my days.

As is true of all habits, not exercising became easier and more ingrained each day I did it. Not only was it easier physically to lay in bed rather than run on a treadmill, my brain became better and better at justifying my lack of exercise:

"I have no time - not in the morning, the afternoon, the evening, weekends, weekdays. It's too cold out. It's too cold in. My gym is too far away [my gym was a block away; I could see my apartment building from the treadmills]. I would definitely exercise at Equinox, but I can't afford to join. If I had a treadmill at home, I would run every day. I can't do exercise DVDs because it would annoy the people living below us. Exercising would take away time I could be spending with my wife and our new baby. What if my son ended up in therapy because daddy was too busy exercising to play with him? I can't risk it."

Even more insidiously, my lazy brain began implanting deeper ideas that would prevent me from exercising today, or tomorrow, or any day: "Does exercise really matter? I'm a cerebral guy - who cares what my body looks or feels like? Sure, exercise is great for Michael Phelps, but I don't need it. My life is just fine without it."

But it affected me. While I maintained a healthy weight through dieting, and I walked several miles each day as part of a normal life in New York City, I could still feel the lack of regular cardio exercise, the kind that really gets my heart pumping. I felt the lack of exercise in my chest. My body dragged. I was in lousy shape. Climbing a flight of stairs caused me to lose my breath. While singing songs to my baby son, I had to pause for breath between each verse. I even confessed to a friend that "I get winded while whistling."

In the back of my mind, I had the nagging notion that I was hurting myself by not exercising. But it was dwarfed by the impeccable, inarguable logic behind a sedentary lifestyle.

To the tiny extent that I did want to exercise, the idea of running a few miles seemed like torture. But of course, I couldn't do any less than that. I was going to exercise perfectly, or not at all.

I waited in vain for my old motivation to suddenly return, for the day when I'd wake up, realize how vital exercise was, jump out of bed, and run five miles with a smile on my face. But it never came.

A few months ago, I read Mini Habits; and everything Stephen said about willpower and motivation lined up with my own experience. He understood every dirty trick my brain had pulled to keep me from disrupting my lazy, comfortable, and deeply unhealthy equilibrium.

I decided to build the Mini Habit of exercising for 5 minutes per day. My Mini Habit would, at least initially, consist of running in place in our backyard if the weather was good, or in our laundry room if it wasn't. It felt absurd, like it would accomplish nothing, but it was an exercise commitment that flew under the radar of every excuse that my brain could come up with. My brain simply said, "Sure, whatever, Carl Lewis. Have fun with your 'exercise'. Maybe you'll qualify for the New York City Marathon over in the laundry room."

That night, I laced up my sneakers and headed to the laundry room. My brain didn't try to stop me. I huffed and puffed in place for five minutes. When my timer went off, I wheezed, "Oh, thank you, thank you" and, coursing with relief, I threw off my sneakers.

That was 85 nights ago, and I haven't missed a night of exercise since then. A few weeks ago, I felt comfortable enough to bump up my Mini Habit to ten minutes of exercise per night. A few days ago, I added 2 1/2 minutes of crunches after I run in place.

If any of this becomes too onerous, I'll shift back to five minutes per night until I'm comfortable exercising again. For now, though, it feels right; and every night of exercise makes the next night easier to accomplish, physically and mentally.

Eventually I hope to build back up to a half-hour of running, and not just running in place. But I know I'll get there; and I know that it will only happen if I continue to do something - however small - instead of nothing.

Even with only 5-10 minutes of cardio every night, I feel so much better. I breathe easier. I walk faster. I sing - and even whistle - without any detrimental effects.

Perhaps most importantly, and fully in line with the book's philosophy on exercise and willpower, exercising has slowly brought back my motivation to exercise. I'm remembering how good I feel when I'm a regular exerciser, the joy of resting, covered in sweat, after I've pushed myself to accomplish something physically difficult. I get excited picturing how my body will eventually look. I'm realizing - once again - how important regular exercise is to my physical, mental, and emotional health.

After 85 nights, I'm excited about this. Slowly, over several months, exercising has once again become a part of my identity. None of it happened magically overnight. It happened in sweaty five- and ten-minute mini-increments.

Mini Habits helped me improve a vital area of my life when nothing else worked. Thank you to Stephen for inventing such a fantastic concept. I hope that anyone who wants to make a similar change will give Mini Habits a try.

612 people found this helpful

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kimberly falzone

Moms, read this book

Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2022

Verified Purchase

Do you struggle to juggle all your responsibilities as a mom? Is self-care neglected because you're caring for other people constantly? I'm a mom of four. Two are in college, one has special needs, and the youngest is 9. I have always felt like I needed to be four different people, one person for each of my children because it requires so much of me to help them all. Do yourself a favor and READ THIS BOOK. You do not lack the will power. You do not lack the ability to achieve your goals. You CAN take care of yourself, your house, and your children every day. No matter what you think your MO is, you're better than all your failures. Inside your brain are all the plans, all the dreams, all the habits you need, just waiting to be released. I'm 50 years old. Yes, you can teach an old dog new tricks. Apart from the Bible, no other book has ever had this big of an impact on my life. Understanding how God created our brain to work is the KEY to success. I LOVE the success I am having each day in my "mini" ways and they have catapulted me to Much Bigger Results than I ever had before. Not only that, but all my kids are catching on. Even my youngest is being trained to change her life in mini ways. She is readily accepting and liking the success that she is having, like keeping her room clean!! I wish I had read this 20 years ago, when I first became a parent. But, better late than never. And, yes, you need to actually read the book. I just finished tonight and knew that I had to leave a review. Start living the life you always dreamed and be the person you always wanted to be. You can do it! God bless!!

10 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Translate all reviews to English

Simple and effective method

Reviewed in Japan on August 22, 2016

Verified Purchase

I've read several books on building habits, but with limited success. Two things I like about this book:

1. The theory is vey simple. Motivation is unreliable, since it fluctuates. Will power, on the other hand, can be controlled. However, it is a limited resource. Mini habits rely on very small amounts of will power. That is why it's sustainable.

2. You can develop multiple habits with Mini Habits. This is possible because it uses minimal will power. I am currently doing the following.
a) cleaning up the desk for 1 minute every day,
b) throwing away 1thing in my room a day
c) sitting once a day in a Japanese "seiza" position

So far, I'm on day 32, and I'm still going. According to Guise, research says that the time it takes to become a habit varies from less than 20 days to almost 300. But I feel that it is going to stick. If it does, it would be transformational for me because having a messy room had always been a part of my identity. I will come back to this post and will let you know if Mini Habits was useful after more days.

20 people found this helpful

nji

納得できる

Reviewed in Japan on October 11, 2017

Verified Purchase

納得した。一貫して繰り返される「目標を大きくするな」という非常にシンプルな点は立ち消えて挫折した数々の経験に重なった。生涯を視野に入れた設定も今の自分なら十分に理解出来る。

3 people found this helpful

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Mr. Paul J. Grenyer

Mini Habits are different. They’re too small for failure.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 5, 2018

Verified Purchase

I’ve read quite a few self help books and while they always seem really good at the time, I’m not particularly good at following through. I guess I don’t necessarily have the willpower or the presence of mind to do what they recommend.

Mini Habits are different. They’re too small for failure.

There’s lots of repetition, which is slightly irritating until towards the end of the book the when the author hints as to why. As the author often says, you start with ridiculously small habits, the reoccuring examples are one pushup a day and writing 50 works a day, because it gets you into the habit, making it easier to do more. But you only have to achieve the small habbit you set out to do. That’s what success looks like. So you can’t fail.

The book was recommended to me by my good friend Tom Bool. Soon after I started reading the book I started walking everyday right around the park. This took a good 30 minutes or more. Will power failed me some days. Now I make sure I walk for 15 minutes every day. Most days I do more as I walk to work. If I don’t walk to work I do 15 minutes or more in the park.

In addition to this my habits are drinking a pint of water a day and reading two pages of a book a day. Everyday I drink more than a pint of water and my incentive is that I don’t have a cup of tea until I’ve drunk my pint. I’m finding reading is enough reward in itself and I’m usually reading more than two pages a day. But if I haven’t found the time to read, I know I can read two pages just before bed.

I wish I’d read this book when I was still responsible for sales calls, because I could have done one a day which would be much easier than the 10 I’d often try and I could have been a success every day.

29 people found this helpful

A.I.93

A jem of a book!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on May 4, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book has been an absolute life changer for me. For years, I'd believed that motivation was the only driving force towards taking action. This belief would always lead me to procrastinate. I couldn't figure out why I was doing this. I read a tone of articles and watched countless YT videos to try to remedy it. But to no success.

Then I came across this book. It has taught me that motivation isn't alway constant. It comes and goes in waves. And if you rely on it too much you'd be left disappointed at times when there just isn't enough of it.

That's why you should make use of willpower, which is far more reliable than motivation. Yes, at the beginning it is tough, but over time you'll develop habits. And it is through these habits you'll gain ultimate consistency and ultimate success.

8 people found this helpful

Amazon Customer

Some good ideas but rambles endlessly without adding anything useful

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 29, 2017

Verified Purchase

The ideas are good and the writing style is occasionally mildly amusing, but the book as a whole is repetitive and boring. It contains about enough for a single blog post, but by George, you paid for a whole book so he repeats the premise about 30 times. You learn more than you ever need to know about his gym habits and how devoted he is to writing. Well, good writing should also involve editing, and he didn't do much of that.

23 people found this helpful

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