Make It Easy by Starting Small

Helps to start new habits and achieve your goals

Can be helpful for: Individuals who struggle to establish and maintain new habits or those struggling with motivation

How to achieve your goals with small steps

If there’s something you’d like to start doing but you’re really struggling to get into the habit, try and make the new habit as easy as possible to start off with. For example:

• If you want to get into 30 minutes of regular exercise per day, but you’re currently doing none- it may be too difficult or overwhelming to start with 30 straight away. Start with 5 minutes, and then build up over time.
• If you want to eat three healthy home-cooked meals a day, but you struggle making anything at the moment- start small. Just start with very easy food to make like cereal, sandwiches- anything that takes a short amount of time. When you get into the routine of feeding yourself regularly, you can start looking at more complex recipes over time.

Motivation strategies: Start small to stay consistent 

Starting with smaller, achievable goals and successfully completing them, often gives people more motivation to carry on with that activity – so make it easy and start small.

What’s the Science?

How difficult we perceive a task to be affects our motivation to complete that task hugely. 30 minutes of exercise seems very difficult to someone who currently does none, but for someone who’s already doing 25 minutes, it’s not much of a jump-up. 

References

Gendron, A. (2023). The Mini ADHD Coach. Penguin Random House UK.