I have a confession. I regularly admonish myself for not having better habits. Consistent content creation is something I absolutely know I should do and yet I have had problems forming that habit. I may have found a solution.
Mini habits.
Issac Newton had it right when he announced that “an object will remain at rest or in uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external force.”
Okaaaaay……what does THAT have to do with selling your products online or me creating consistent content?
Well, if you are doing nothing but fretting about selling and taking no actions it has plenty to do with it. If I put content creation in my TODO list every week yet only get it done sporadically I have a problem.
Like most good things in business, selling consistently is always the result of forming some best practice habits. Things like list building, writing content, having “conversations” with prospects. (I put that word in quotes for a reason).
These types of habits are big. And important. They hard to get started on.
A Possible Solution
I recently stumbled upon a very interesting book, “Mini Habits” by Stephen Guise. He is a proponent of something called the “mini habit.” His supposition is that the hardest part of starting a new habit is…..starting. And doing it consistently. Creating a habit.
Having a hard time getting into the habit of daily exercise Guise told himself he would do ONE push-up every day, no matter what. It was a piece of cake to convince himself to do a single push-up. It used up very little of his willpower quotient to do ONE.
Of course what happened was that once he did the one, he invariably did more. He always did the one though and eventually, his brain took over and it became a habit. The one push-up habit grew into a daily exercise regimen. It became harder NOT to do.
Good habits can be broken down into what Guise calls “too small to fail.” He says you have to make the mini habit “stupid small.”
Then no matter what, do it every day.
My New Habits
I decided to make my content creation a mini habit. Every morning, (in my case), I have told myself I will write 50 words. It may be a blog post or a nurture sequence email. It could be content on my website.
Every single day I am going to write and if it is only 50 words so be it. Usually, once I get going I write more than that. As a minimum though, I will do 50 words. While I don’t think it is a habit yet, I know I am making progress on that goal.
Do you need to form some new habits to help get your selling off the ground? Focus on a couple of new mini habits and see if that gets you going. It’s working for me so far.
This post is proof!