One of my favorite books is The Compound Effect by Dan Hardy. In it, Dan describes how little, everyday decisions will either take you to the life you desire or to disaster by default.
This means even if you only do 10 pushups every day, at the end of the year, your body will benefit from 3650 pushups.
Those small baby steps add up to a lot over time!
Consequently, the bad habits you keep, even if small, will add up to a big negative snowball when you do it for 1, 2, 5, 10 years.
The Compound Effect has much greater benefits than just adding up small actions.
Let’s say you commit to doing 5 minutes of exercise, every day… 5 minutes is such a small, insignificant amount of time that it’s silly not to be able to make yourself do it right?
Well once you start your 5 minutes and have gotten past the part of getting started, your brain is much more likely to want to keep going since you’ve gotten a little momentum going.
That means your planned 5 minutes will usually turn into 15+ minutes. All without the internal resistance that usually keeps you on the couch.
And if you actually only do the 5 minutes you initially committed to, you’re still ahead of the game and get a gold star for the day.
If you have struggled in the past to stay motivated, try using the Compound Effect. It’ll get you back on track and on the way to your goals.
“Even if you’re taking baby steps, you’re still lapping the people on the couch!”