The concept of mini habits is simple:
For every task, you need to do daily to reach your goals, set a minimum so low that you cannot possibly fail to do it. In online marketing, especially for part-time internet marketers, it is of incredible value.
The original book was written by Stephen Guise.
The idea is that you will normally end up doing a lot more – but even on days when it isn’t possible to do what you planned, you will still be moving forward, and you will retain your momentum.
For example:
Let’s say you are a blogger. You aim to write one blog post every day. However, since you also have a full-time job to attend to, you often come home completely drained – and you just leave it for when you feel better. After all, how will you manage to write even 500 words the way you are feeling after a tough day?
But if you apply the concept of “mini habits”…
Let’s say you set yourself a target of just 100 words per day. If you draw up a framework for the blog post beforehand, every 100 words can be about something specific.
But 100 words sound ridiculous, right? How will you ever get anything done that way?
Well, consider this:
1. 100 Words are easy to write, even if you are dog tired.
2. After every 5 days, you will have a complete blog post – which you probably wouldn’t have had – even if you are going through a tough time at work.
3. On many occasions, you will find yourself writing more – so you won’t just be writing an average of 100 words per day.
It’s all about MOMENTUM.
If you work on your goals every single day, even if it is just a tiny bit, you keep moving closer to achieving those goals. But the actual magic is this:
The momentum motivates you to keep going. As long as you are making some progress, even if it seems ridiculously slow at times, it is unlikely that you will give up.
In addition to that, the fact that your minimum requirement is so low makes it easier to achieve it every day – which also makes it less likely that you will give up.
For instance:
Your original plan was to (a) write a blog post every day, (b) be active on Facebook every day, and (c) be active on Twitter every day.
That would have taken you roughly two hours per day. If you come home tired, or if you come home feeling de-motivated, that could seem like a huge task.
But what if…
1. Instead of writing 500 words or more, you only write 100. That should take you a maximum of 15 minutes. Depending on your typing skills, it could be less – but let’s say you need to verify some facts first. So let’s make it 15 minutes. If you find that, after the first 100 words, you wish to continue, everything else you achieve is a bonus.
2. Instead of spending 45 minutes on Facebook, you go and share one single thing on your profile. It could be a motivational quote or a useful piece of information from someone else.
3. Instead of spending 15 minutes plus on Twitter, you share one single thing – similar to what you did on Facebook.
What it will achieve is this:
1. It will systematically bring you closer to your next completed piece of content.
2. You will still seem to be active daily on both social networks.
Now before you shoot this down as being insignificant, consider this:
Consistency builds trust with your audience – as it does for any brand. Even if you put out only one blog post per week, but you put it out every week, people will come to expect it from you. In addition to that, even if you only post one single item per day on each social network you engage on (ok, Pinterest excluded), people who view any of your profiles will perceive you as being active every day.
From their perspective, that means that – if they need to – they can connect with you on any given day.
In conclusion:
If you – at times – find it difficult to keep your daily commitments to your online business, set yourself the lowest possible targets, and stick with them – no matter what.
You will find that the longer you stick to your mini habits, the more you will find yourself doing more than the minimum. It all comes back to momentum, making progress, and building your personal brand as an online marketer.
If you try to stick to doing more every day, it becomes easy to let it slide for a day, then two, and then a week…
And then, besides not making any real progress or building any trust with your audience, it becomes very easy to let it all go…
And to simply give up.
As Martin Luther King said: “If you can’t run, walk. If you can’t walk, crawl. But by all means, keep going forward.”
As long as you keep moving forward, you will keep coming closer to your goal – and success becomes almost inevitable. Not to mention that giving up becomes less and less likely.
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