When we make lists of things we want to do to improve our lives (similar to making New Year’s Resolutions), we have these big worthy goals. Like this:
*lose 20 lbs.
*run a marathon
*pay off credit card debt
*organize every closet and cabinet in my house
*fix our bedtime routine
*clean out the attic
*plan healthy menus for a whole year

There is nothing wrong with setting these big goals. All of them seem important. All of them may even need to be done. However, when we set out to change everything at once, it rarely works. We get overwhelmed either by the number of tasks we need to do or by the difficulty of incorporating all the new changes. So we end up falling back to our old comfort zone and feeling worse about ourselves and our inability to meet goals.

There are a couple of things I have done wrong with this process, and I wonder if the same is true of you:
1 – I tried to change too many things at once.
2 – I tried to make big changes in one area all at once.

But what if we focus on just ONE goal at a time? And what if we did something small toward that one goal every single day? Something super small and do-able? Would we still meet the goal? Yes, it might take longer, but when you look back at your progress it won’t seem as if it took so long after all.

Three books have really shaped my thinking about this idea: The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson.

In this post, I’m going to share some of my takeaways about making small changes from Jeff Olson’s book.

See my post about small changes that lead to big results with The 5-Second Rule here and my post about Atomic Habits here.

THE SLIGHT EDGE – SECRET TO A SUCCESSFUL LIFE by Jeff Olson

“The law of nature is, Do the thing, and you shall have the power: but they who do not the thing have not the power.”
~Ralph Waldo Emerson

*Jeff says that how to do something is not the problem (how to lose weight, how to start a side business, how to save money). The problem is not the actions we take. The problem is that we don’t keep doing them. (This reminds me of the James Clear comment about embracing the boredom of your habits and keep doing them anyway.)

*According to Jeff: “We are not taught that the key to success is to ‘double your rate of failure.’ On the contrary, we’re taught to avoid failure like the plague. ‘Failure is not an option!’ Really? It had better be an option! It had better be, because whether or not you consider it an option, it’s going to happen. If you go through life with the philosophy that ‘failure is not an option,’ then you’ll never have any good opportunities to learn. (Which won’t really matter anyway, because if failure is not an option, chances are you won’t even try in the first place!)”

“Successful people fail their way to the top.”

*Successful people do simple things that are easy to do but they are also easy NOT to do.

*The choice you face every day is whether or not you will do simple, positive actions repeated over time. This is how you make the Slight Edge work FOR you. But if you don’t do those repeated actions, the Slight Edge will work AGAINST you.

*Jeff encourages by saying that we are never too old and that it’s never too late to start applying Slight Edge tactics to achieve our dreams.

“It’s never too late to start. It’s always too late to wait.”

*We tend to think that we need more willpower, but Jeff says that the most powerful force for change is TIME. The right choices you make today, over time, will lead to greater and greater success. The wrong choices you make today, over time, will hurt you. Think of it like gaining weight. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens over time, from bad choices repeated over and over.

*Jeff tells a story that was first told by Jim Collins in Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t. The story has to do with attempting to make a 5,000 pound flywheel start rotating. After repeated effort and pushing, it starts to move. The question is — which push actually made the flywheel start to move? Jim says, “It was all of them added together in an overall accumulation of effort applied in a consistent direction.”

*Jeff says, “Every decision you make is a slight edge decision. What you’re going to do, how you’re going to act, what you’re going to read, who you’re going to chat with on the phone, what you’re going to eat for lunch, who you’re going to associate with. . . What you’re going to get done today.” Making the right decisions, or making more of them over and over again is what gets the Slight Edge working for you. And it all begins with a choice. You can always start fresh, no matter what you’ve done before.

*How long will it take before you see results? Jeff says, “Chances are it will take longer than you want it to — and when the time arrives, you’ll to be astonished at how quick it seemed.”

*One of the best metaphors Jeff uses over and over in the book is that you have to start with a penny.

“To accomplish anything worth accomplishing, to create success, to achieve your dreams, you don’t have to do the impossible, extraordinary, superhuman things. But you have to do something. You have to start with a penny.”

*Jeff goes on to describe how success comes from a very small beginning, but there has to be a beginning. So doing a “penny’s worth” of effort to get something started is all you need to do to begin changing your life for the better. (If you’ve read my other posts, does this sound familiar?!)

*If you start with just 15 minutes of exercise, or just reading five pages of an inspiring book such as Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill or The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey, are you going to suddenly become physically fit or suddenly filled with strategies for how to create great success? Nope. But, continuing to do those small things, day after day after day, WILL lead to those results. You have to start with a penny’s worth of effort.

*Jeff gives many examples of the Slight Edge principles at work throughout the book. One of my favorites comes from the movie Bruce Almighty when God (played by Morgan Freeman) says to Jim Carrey’s character: “You want a miracle? Be the miracle.” Use Mel Robbin’s 5-Second Rule and get up and go do something that will lead to the miracle you want (fitness, success, wealth, whatever).

*Jeff says that we love rags-to-riches stories and “overnight success” stories because they’re exciting in the retelling. But when the story is actually happening, it’s more like this: “. . . the rags-to-riches success story person has gotten to where he is by making mundane, quiet, little Slight Edge decisions and repeating simple disciplines, day in and day out.”

*Time is the great equalizer. It will either lead to your success or reveal your lack of discipline.

“For things to change, you’ve got to change. For things to get better, you’ve got to get better. It’s easy to do. But it’s easy not to do too.”

*People on the success curve of the Slight Edge don’t dwell on the past. They use what happened in the past to review, take responsibility, learn from mistakes and then use that information to make changes. They understand that you can’t change the past but you can change the future. We are always either improving or diminishing. Jeff states that “Either you let go of where you are and get to where you could be, or you hang onto where you are and give up where you could be. You are either going for your dreams or giving up your dreams . . . It’s your choice.”

*Jeff says that there are five “faces” of the Slight Edge that you can use to pursue your dreams. They are: momentum, completion, habit, reflection and celebration.

*Momentum – Jeff reminds us of the Aesop fable about the tortoise and the hare. The moral of that fable is that “slow and steady wins the race.” He points out the word “steady” is the key here. A body in motion tends to stay in motion. It’s better to do something for even a few minutes daily than to try to do some marathon session once a week.

“Give yourself something to work toward – constantly.” ~Mary Kay Ash

*Completion – finishing things you have been putting off helps with that momentum part too. Take on one incomplete project and take baby steps until it is complete. Then tackle another project. You will find yourself moving forward with more energy.

*Habit – read my notes from Atomic Habits HERE for specific suggestions on developing good habits and eliminating habits that are not serving you.

*Reflection – Jeff suggests taking some time at the end of the day to write down or talk about what you did do that day. Many of us make a list of what we need to do at the beginning of the day, but do not necessarily reflect at the end of the day. Jeff offers some specific prompts for reflection:

~Did you read ten pages of a good book?
~Did you eat healthy food and get some good exercise?
~Did you engage in positive associations?
~Did you do the things you need to do to be successful in your business?
~Did you tell somebody, “I love you”?

Jeff shares that the first time he did this exercise, by 10 a.m. the next day, he found himself changing his normal course for the day and engaging in more positive Slight Edge actions so that his reflection would be more positive at the end of the day!

*Celebration – this helps keep you focused on all the positive steps you’re taking. Celebration is so important for helping you keep going when your overall goal seems so huge. Noticing all the good you’re doing, all the consistent steps you’re taking is worth celebrating.

*Learn by studying (take a course, read, listen to podcasts) and then learn by doing (put it into action in some way).

*Jeff tells the story of the Apollo rockets. Did you know that on their way to the moon they were off course 97% of the time? They still got to the moon because of continuous course correction. As Jeff says, it’s a prime example of the Slight Edge in action. What does this have to do with us? We can continually correct our course as well. Instead of choosing junk food for a snack, we can choose fruit or raw vegetables. Instead of crashing on the couch after work, we can change clothes and go work out or go for a run. Instead of joining in with work friends in complaining about everything that is going wrong, we can either turn the conversation into a positive direction or we can excuse ourselves from the conversation.

*The Japanese have a concept of continuous review called “kaizen.” Another way to think of it is “plan, do, review.” So we can plan for what we are going to do, but sooner or later, we need to get started with doing. Along the way, we can review how it’s going and adjust the plan as needed.

*Learning through modeling, by surrounding yourself with people who are good at what you want to do, is another key for understanding and using the Slight Edge. The law of association says that we become the average of the five people with whom we spend the most time. That doesn’t mean we drop everyone in our lives, but it does mean that we
might need to re-think some friendships or relationships that may not be as beneficial.

*When you first start anything, you will feel anxious and unsure. It’s okay to be a toddler and fall down! That’s how you learn. Jeff says that as we learn — through study and doing, information and experience — we lower our anxiety level and raise our mastery level. That makes sense for anything we do in life, but somehow we might forget that when we are pursuing an ambitious goal.

*One enormously helpful tip that Jeff passes along comes from Napoleon Hill’s book Think and Grow Rich. That tip involves forming a “mastermind” group with other people who are working to achieve a goal. The purpose of the group is to provide support to every other member in the pursuit of their goal. You might think that you don’t have time to meet with another group of people, but this can also be done virtually, through Facebook groups for example.

*Jeff identifies four universal steps for making a big goal come true:

“For a goal to come true:
1 – You must write it down, make it specific and give it a deadline.
2 – You must look at it every day.
3 – You must understand and pay the price.
4 – You must have a plan to start with.”

*Step one is fairly straightforward. Think about what big goal you want to achieve in your life. This is not a “clean out the closets” type of goal, but a big goal that will improve nearly everything in your life (finishing your degree, getting another degree, pursuing another kind of certification in your career, finding a new job, earning a certain amount of money, etc.). Write it down, make it as specific as possible and give yourself a deadline (a time by which you plan to have achieved that goal).

*Step two – look at your big goal and read it every single day. The good thing about this step is that, once this goal is on your mind, you will notice helpful resources everywhere you go.

*Step three – this simply means that you have to do something toward making your goal a reality. Baby steps. One penny level task at a time. But understand that every step you take in the direction of your goal is going to help you while every time you do not take a step will ultimately keep you from achieving your goal.

*Step four – start with a plan, but know that the plan will change and improve along the way. The key point is to just start with something. There is no perfect plan, so don’t spend all your energy planning. As Jeff says:

“Do the thing and you shall have the power. Don’t try to figure it out. If you want twice the success, double your rate of failure. You start with a plan, the go through the process of continuous learning through both study and doing, adjusting all the time through the kaizen of plan, do, review and then adjust . . . You need a first plan so you can get to your second plan, so you can get to your third plan, so you can get to your fourth plan.”

*Jeff walks you through five areas of your life and asks you to think about one simple, single, easy-to-do activity that you can do every single day that will improve that area of your life.

*The five life areas he suggests to start with are:
your health
your personal development (your own learning)
your relationships
your finances, and
your life itself (your impact or the meaning you want your life to have).

*The last chapter of the book lists some steps to take next. The steps include: doing those simple, daily disciplines in each of those five key areas; do some kind of daily review of your Slight Edge activities (through a journal, with a coach, or a habit tracker); and spend time with people who have achieved the goals you want to achieve.

*According to Jeff, successful people:
~don’t look for shortcuts, nor do they hope for the “big breakthrough”
~never blame circumstances or other people; they take full responsibility for their lives
~know that “steady wins the race”
~use inertia to build momentum
~identify habits that don’t serve them and replace them with those that do
~understand the power of reflection, completion, and celebration
~acquire the knowledge they need to succeed by studying and doing, by emulating the habits of mentors and coaches, and by planning, doing and reviewing
~spend time around people who are living by the same values they want to have and doing the things they want to do in their lives
~read at least ten pages of a powerful, life-transforming book every day
~listen to at least 15 minutes of educational and inspirational podcasts every day
~understand the power of simple things
~understand the power of daily disciplines

This is a lot of great stuff packed into a relatively short book. I hope you will read Jeff’s book and “start with a penny” to begin working on your own goals! I’d love to hear your thoughts about the book.

If you’ve ever tried to implement big changes in your life (get in shape, pay off debt, organize your entire house, etc.), you know that it gets overwhelming to make these changes when regular life gets in the way.

There is nothing wrong with setting these big goals. All of them seem important. All of them may even need to be done. However, when we set out to change everything at once, it rarely works. We get overwhelmed either by the number of tasks we need to do or by the difficulty of incorporating all the new changes. So we end up falling back to our old comfort zone and feeling worse about ourselves and our inability to meet goals.

There are a couple of things I have done wrong with this process, and I wonder if the same is true of you:
1 – I tried to change too many things at once.
2 – I tried to make big changes in one area all at once.

But what if we focus on making small changes? What if we work on achieving just ONE goal at a time? And what if we did something small toward that one goal every single day? Something super small and do-able? Would we still meet the goal? Yes, it might take longer, but when you look back at your progress it won’t seem as if it took so long after all.

Three books have really shaped my thinking about this idea: The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson.

In this post, I’m going to share some of my takeaways about making small changes from James Clear’s book.

See my post about small changes that lead to big results with The 5-Second Rule here.

ATOMIC HABITS by James Clear

*According to James, there are three levels of change:
1 – changing your outcomes (most goals we set are related to this). Examples: decluttering a closet, losing weight, writing a book.
2 – changing your process, which means changing your habits and systems (most habits we build are related to this). Examples: starting a new workout routine, decluttering your desk and files to be more efficient at work, developing a meditation practice.
3 – changing your identity, which means changing your beliefs about yourself.

According to James:

“The ultimate form of intrinsic motivation is when a habit becomes part of your identity.”

That is what builds your motivation to maintain the habits.

*There is science behind the way habits work which can help us change our habits or develop new habits. The habit feedback loop goes like this: cue, craving, response, reward. Using that habit feedback loop, here is how to create a good habit: make it obvious, make it attractive, make it easy, and make it satisfying. Using that habit feedback loop, here is how to break a bad habit: make it invisible, make it unattractive, make it difficult, and make it unsatisfying.

“All behavior is driven by the desire to solve a problem.”

*The first law is to make it obvious. Here’s how to do that.
1 – make a specific plan for what you will do when. James uses the template: I WILL (BEHAVIOR) AT (TIME) IN (LOCATION). For example: I will listen to a business podcast for twenty minutes at 5 p.m. on my commute home. I will exercise for 15 minutes at 6 a.m. in my family room. I will tell my partner I love them at 8 a.m. before leaving for work.

2 – you can also “stack” your habit by connecting it with something you are already doing. James uses the template: AFTER (CURRENT HABIT), I WILL (NEW HABIT). For example: After pouring my cup of coffee, I will meditate for three minutes. After I eat dinner, I will pack my lunch for tomorrow. After coming home in the afternoon, I will say one thing that I am grateful for that happened today.

3 – after you create a small habit stack, you can create a larger stack. For example: After pouring my cup of coffee, I will meditate for three minutes. After meditating for three minutes, I will write my goals and plans for the day. After I write my goals and plans for the day, I will begin work on my first task.

4 – another way to use a habit stack is with a visual reminder or a cue. The cue needs to be something that happens as often as your desired behavior. For example: When I want to purchase something over $100, I will wait 24 hours before purchasing. When I serve myself a meal, I will fill my plate with veggies first.

5 – speaking of cues, you can design your environment to make the cue more obvious. For example: if you want to take vitamins in the morning, leave the bottle beside your bathroom sink. If you want to write more letters, leave the stationery on your desk or table.

*I love how James also describes how to break a bad habit by “inverting” the laws. So to invert the first law of “make it obvious”, you can make your bad habit invisible by removing it from your environment. An obvious example of this would be to not buy ice cream or cookies if you want to cut down on eating sugar.

*The second law is to make it attractive. Here’s how to do that:

1 – use temptation bundling by linking an activity you want to do with an activity you need to do. Here is James’s template: After CURRENT HABIT, I will HABIT I NEED. After HABIT I NEED, I will HABIT I WANT. For example, if you want to check social media in the morning, but you need to get started on your first important task for the day: After I get my morning coffee, I will write for 15 minutes. After I write for 15 minutes, I will check social media.

*The inversion of the second law is to make it unattractive. One key tip here is to focus on the benefits of avoiding your bad habits and reframe your thinking. For example: instead of saying “I have to go work out”, you could say “I get to go work on making my body healthy and strong”. Instead of saying “I can’t eat any sugar”, say “I am making my body healthy and strong by eating protein and vegetables.”

*The third law is to make it easy. Here’s how to do that:

1 – remember that “the best is the enemy of the good.” There is a difference between motion and action. If I read lots of articles about workout plans, that’s motion. If I actually start a workout plan, that’s action. The point is to just get started (as Mel Robbins says: 5-4-3-2-1, remember?). You can always tweak along the way. James says that the key is to start with repetition, not perfection.

2 – habits form based on frequency, not time. In other words — frequency of practice matters more than how many days you do something.

3 – to make a new habit easy to do, break it down with James’s two-minute rule. Nearly any habit can be broken down into a two-minute version. For example:
“Read before bed each night” becomes “Read one page.”
“Do thirty minutes of yoga” becomes “Take out my yoga mat.”
“Fold the laundry” becomes “fold one shirt.”

This might sound ridiculous, but the point to make your habits as easy as possible to begin. You want the first two minutes to be super easy. It helps you master the art of just showing up and becomes the “gateway” or the ritual at the beginning of a bigger routine. This also helps build your identity as a reader or a yogi or a laundry master, because everyone who identifies that way also has to do the first task that you are doing.

4 – after you have mastered the two-minute rule, you can start habit shaping to scale your habit up to your ultimate goal. After doing the beginning step, start advancing to a more intermediate step and master that before moving up to the next level. For example, if your goal is to become an early riser, here are your steps:
Step 1: Be home by 9 p.m. every night.
Step 2: Have all devices turned off by 9 p.m. every night.
Step 3: Be in bed by 9 p.m. every night.
Step 4: Lights off by 9 p.m. every night.
Step 5: Wake up at 5 a.m. every day.

*The inversion of the third law is to make it difficult! One way is to use a commitment device. A commitment device is something you do now that will control your actions in the future. Examples: logging out of all social media accounts before you sit down to work (so you would have to log back in to switch tabs and check it). Have the waiter box up half your restaurant meal before you start eating. Pay for a class or a coaching session in advance so you have to show up.

*You can also automate some habits, such as getting prescriptions automatically refilled, making automatic payments to a retirement account, or using a meal delivery service to ensure healthier meals.

*The fourth law is to make it satisfying. Here’s how to do that:

1 – James says that the Cardinal Rule of Behavior Change is this: What is rewarded is repeated. What is punished is avoided. He goes on to say that what is immediately rewarded is repeated. So the best way to work with your own human nature is to add a little bit of immediate pleasure to the habits that pay off in the long run and a little bit of immediate pain to those that don’t.

2 – Doing simple things to make something immediately enjoyable is key. Rewarding yourself with a small purchase for working out daily or avoiding a certain food daily would work. Getting a massage, taking a bubble bath, eating a bowl of ice cream — any of these could be rewards. But you want to match your reward with your desired identity. For instance: if your desired identity is to be a healthy eater, maybe that bowl of ice cream would not be a good reward. If your desired identity is to be someone who is sticking to their budget and saving money, then making a small purchase would not be a good reward.

3 – One of my personal favorite strategies that James describes is what he calls the Paper Clip strategy, or what other people call a habit tracker. This one totally works for me. This is where you track your habits so that you see clear evidence that you are making progress. This could be moving a paper clip from one jar to another each time you do something toward a goal. Or you could put X’s on a calendar. Or keep track of the total time you have spent working on a task or going to the gym.

*Technology can do some of this for you. Your Fitbit or Apple Watch tracks your steps or your sleep, for instance.

*You don’t need to track 50,000 habits. Choose a few habits that you are working toward and that you are trying to make a consistent part of your life.

*It helps to track your habit immediately after you complete it. Track your workout, write down your time spent working on a goal, record your food in a food journal.

4 – One of the many things I love about this book is how “real” James is and how he gives suggestions for when you mess up. Habits will break down from time to time. Here is James’s rule for when that happens: never miss twice. The key is to get back to the habit as quickly as possible. It’s valuable to just show up, even on your bad or busy days. Simply doing something is huge. This helps build your identity as someone who doesn’t miss ______.

5 – To make a habit unsatisfying, try making a habit contract with an accountability partner. When we get someone else to help hold us accountable for keeping our desired habit, it motivates us. Some examples of this: a workout partner, texting your accountability partner when you finish your goal task for the day, recording your eating plan macros and sharing that with a partner or weight loss group.

A final takeaway is how to stay focused when you get bored working on your goals. James tells a great story about talking to an elite sports coach. He asked the coach:

“‘What’s the difference between the best athletes and everyone else?’ I asked. ‘What do the really successful people do that most don’t?’
“He mentioned the factors you might expect: genetics, luck, talent. But then he said something I wasn’t expecting: ‘At some point it comes down to who can handle the boredom of training every day, doing the same lifts over and over and over.’’”

Remember that these are just my notes and what has been helpful for me. There is a ton of other helpful information in James’s book, which I highly recommend. Let me know what you think of his book and what is helpful for you!

When we make lists of things we want to do to improve our lives (similar to making New Year’s Resolutions), we have these big worthy goals. Like this:

*lose 20 lbs.
*run a marathon
*pay off credit card debt
*organize every closet and cabinet in my house
*fix our bedtime routine
*clean out the attic
*plan healthy menus for a whole year

There is nothing wrong with setting these big goals. All of them seem important. All of them may even need to be done. However, when we set out to change everything at once, it rarely works. We get overwhelmed either by the number of tasks we need to do or by the difficulty of incorporating all the new changes. So we end up falling back to our old comfort zone and feeling worse about ourselves and our inability to meet goals.

There are a couple of things I have done wrong with this process, and I wonder if the same is true of you:
1 – I tried to change too many things at once.
2 – I tried to make big changes in one area all at once.

But what if we focus on making small changes? What if we work on achieving just ONE goal at a time? And what if we did something small toward that one goal every single day? Something super small and do-able? Would we still meet the goal? Yes, it might take longer, but when you look back at your progress it won’t seem as if it took so long after all.

Three books have really shaped my thinking about this idea: The 5 Second Rule by Mel Robbins, Atomic Habits by James Clear, and The Slight Edge by Jeff Olson.

In this post, I’m going to share some of my takeaways about making small changes from Mel Robbins’ book. In my next posts, I will focus on the other two books.

THE 5 SECOND RULE by Mel Robbins

*The basic idea, according to Mel, is this:

“The moment you have an instinct to act on a goal you must 5 – 4 – 3 – 2 – 1 and physically move or your brain will stop you.”

”Pushing yourself to take simple actions creates a chain reaction in your confidence and your productivity.”

Doing just one small, simple act toward your ultimate goal keeps you moving forward in a positive way. Exercising for just five minutes doesn’t appear to make any difference in your ultimate goal of getting in shape. But exercising for five minutes, every single day, helps you start seeing yourself as someone who works out. Before long, you’ll be increasing your time and doing more to move yourself toward your goal of getting in shape.

”. . . it’s not the big moves that define our lives; it’s the smallest ones.”

*Using the 5-second rule and doing those small actions every day (or hour or week) builds your courage and your belief in yourself. It changes how you see yourself, which changes so many actions. Waiting until everything is perfect or until you have the perfect plan or until WHATEVER just keeps you from getting where you want to go and it might even make your situation worse.

”You can feel uncertain and be ready. You can be afraid and do it anyway. You can fear rejection and still go for it.”

*Separate your feelings (which you can’t always control) from your actions (which you can control). In other words, even if you don’t feel like having that tough conversation, going for a run, tackling the toughest task on your to-do list — 5-4-3-2-1, go.

*Confidence comes from taking action. What you do changes your perception of who you are. You have to actually do something, even something small, if you want to change your life.

*Start using the 5-Second Rule by setting your alarm and putting it across the room or in your bathroom. Then, when that alarm goes off in the morning, 5-4-3-2-1, hop out of bed and turn the alarm off. No snooze button, no going back to bed.

*Every single diet, exercise program, meditation program, any kind of program will improve your health. But you have to actually do it, not just think about it. Remember that your feelings don’t matter. What matters is what you actually DO.

*Make a promise to yourself that you will do something (whatever it is you are trying to implement), and then never break that promise.

*Productivity depends on focus — the ability to manage distractions so you can focus on the task at hand and focusing on what matters most for you to do so that you don’t waste time watching cat videos on youtube.

*Decide that distractions are not good. Then remove them. Close the browser tabs. Turn your phone screen side down. Put headphones on or earbuds in and block out noise. Go to another location where you can focus on what you need to do.

*Here is Mel’s daily routine:
~Get up when the alarm rings
~Walk to the bathroom (where she keeps her phone) & turn off the alarm
~Brush teeth, wash face & think about one to three things that she MUST do today to move closer to her goal
~Get ready for the day & get coffee
~Write those one to three MUST DO tasks down and why they are important
~Plan the day
~”30 before 7:30” – start working on those MUST DO before you even leave for your day job. Schedule time to come back to whatever MUST DO needs to also be worked on later.
~Plan your “quitting time”. What time will you wrap up your day job and come home to your time by yourself or with your family?

(By the way — Mel also has the 5-Second Journal which guides you through this morning process and also serves as a planner. Check it out!)

*How to use the 5-second rule to beat procrastination: Use it to make yourself start, but start very small. Do something for 5-15 minutes, then take a break. Do that over and over until the task is done.

Remember that these are just my notes and what has been helpful for me. There is a ton of other helpful information in Mel’s book, which I highly recommend. Let me know what you think of her book and what is helpful for you!