Habits–1% Improvements

Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep! It’s 5:20 AM and time to get up. I wake up at the same time every morning and do the same daily tasks as part of my morning routine. I drink water, write 3 pages, visualize, exercise, and study my scriptures. My morning routine has become a habit. It is something I perform regularly and automatically. 

We all have habits. Some are good and some are bad. Kissing your kids before bed is a good habit. Yelling at your kids to get their chores done is a bad habit. Drinking water is a good habit. Drinking soda is a bad habit. James Clear teaches in his book Atomic Habits that any type of habit accumulates. We don’t typically have overnight transformations, but 1% improvements, created by habits, that lead to success. 

I love the example of this found in The Ant and the Elephant. Suppose you were asked to put one drop of blue dye in a giant container of clear water. Everyday. One drop only. If you missed a day you couldn’t add two. One drop only. You do this, and after several days you expect that you will start to see changes in the water. It should be turning blue by now. But you can’t see any difference.  You keep at it. One drop of blue dye everyday. After a couple of weeks you begin to get discouraged. You should be seeing results by now but the water still looks as clear as the first day. One a day a friend comes with you and exclaims at the beautiful blue water. Because she hasn’t been seeing the water everyday, there is a stark difference to her. For you, being in close proximity to the water has kept you from noticing the small changes. 

This “slow pace of transformation”, as James Clear calls is it, is what makes it easy to quit good habits or make bad habits slide. When we repeat 1% actions day after day, our small choices compound into big results. 

What are some good habits you have done consistently that have created big results in your life?