Atomic Habits and Incremental Improvement

For personal development, prevailing wisdom seems to be that rather than setting big lofty goals for ourselves, we should make small incremental improvements and commit to small behavioral changes that we can develop into healthy habits.

Set Priorities

Ryan Holiday suggests (mirror/archive) that we prioritise the things that we think are most important and get them done early in the day whilst our energy reserves are full. He gives some celebrity anecdotes about this point for Hugh Jackman and Camilla Cabello.

Avoid Shiny Outcome Syndrome

Shiny Outcome Syndrome is what happens when you focus on outcomes and outputs generated by yourself and others rather than focusing on what is actionable right now. The term appears to have been coined by Justin Welsh who talks about it (mirror/archive) in his Saturday Solopreneur newsletter. However, it also fits with stuff that many other productivity gurus have written about.

In this blog post (mirror/archive), Kurtis Pykes calls this concept "the positive fantasy trap" - time spent fantasising about positive outcomes of a change you haven't yet made activates the reward centre of your brain so you are less motivated to actually do the thing. Alternatively, this view might make the outcome seem impossible and the task insurmountable. 

Ryan Holiday writes about (mirror/archive) James Clear's Atomic Habits:

...repetitive actions accumulate and add up in a big way over time. Don’t promise yourself you’re going to read more; instead, commit to reading one page per day.

Thinking big is great, but thinking small is easier. And easier is what we’re after when it comes to getting started. Because once you get started, you can build.