One Apple A Day #811 - the smallest thing
Not all morning I'm inspired to write. Sometimes I have no idea, and sometimes I just don't feel like doing it. Maybe it's because I'm tired, or I have a rough night or, and this is the worst, the thoughts about the day ahead have already taken hold of my mind.
Whatever the reason, when I drag myself to the desk, I'm tempted to let it go. I can clearly hear that small voice in my head whispering "who cares? You can do it another day."
However, I just need to do the smallest of things, and magic happens.
I start a 15 minutes timer on the Tide app with a relaxing music loop. That tiny gesture is enough to silence that voice in my head and take me into my little morning creative space.
It happens over time without me realising it. Day after day, the small action of starting the timer with the music became a sort of a trigger or switch activating my morning writing ritual.
When I realised it, I began observing my habits and the way I do things during the day. And I discover there are plenty of such triggers and switches. Associated to both positive and negative habits. Some are really tiny and subtle, others are more evident.
The cool thing is that, when I want to activate a process, habit or ritual, I don't have to focus on the whole thing. I just need to find the switch and trigger it. The smaller, the better.
Like for this ritual, writing for fifteen minutes seems a lot some mornings, and it may hold me from doing it. But starting a timer is such a quick and simple action that it's easy to do it every morning.
If you want to install a habit or behaviour, it may help you to identify a tiny thing that can work as a switch and just focus on that.
P.S: I just realised I messed up with the number on the posts; somehow what was supposed to be the apple 763 became the 673. So, I updated the titles (not the URLs) to fix this and I realised that I crossed the "800" milestone. Now I'm heading full throttle for the "thousand" mark.