11 Micro Habits to Make a Lasting Impact on Your Life

“I’ll complete two certifications this year.”

“I’ll reduce my social media usage from 2.5 hours to 20 minutes.”

“This year, I’ll gain more work-life balance.”

We’ve all had such lofty goals at some point in life and found it hard to achieve.

Sometimes, a change is too big to make in one go and can completely mess up your routine. The pressure of achieving something so huge can leave you feeling overwhelmed, even without the negative self-talk!

At other times, the goal is just ambiguous. For instance, “Achieving work-life balance.” What does it mean in terms of action?

That’s why you need micro habits. This post will examine micro habits, their science, and how to implement them daily.

11 Micro Habits (And the Science Behind Them) With an Implementation Plan

What Are Micro Habits?

Micro habits are small steps you build into your routine to achieve your long-term goal. Instead of trying to accomplish a big, ambitious goal in one go, you divide it into small, more doable actions. While these are small habits, they can lead to serious benefits.

Now, let’s see how a big goal will translate into small habits.

“I’ll complete two certifications this year. To achieve this, I’ll spend twenty minutes daily learning.”

“I’ll reduce my social media usage from 2.5 hours to 20 minutes. To achieve this, I’ll reduce my social media usage by five minutes daily.“

“I’ll gain more work-life balance this year. To achieve this, I’ll advance my log-off time by ten minutes every day.“

The science behind micro habits

Believe it or not, the brain is lazy. It loves repeated actions that require fewer decisions.

When you perform an action repeatedly, a habit loop or a neural pathway is created in the basal ganglia—the group of structures in your brain that takes care of learning, behavior, and emotions.

Once a habit is formed, decision-making related to that habit slows down and stops, thereby saving energy. Between 40% and 95% of what we do daily falls into the habit category.

Let’s understand this with an example. Suppose you spend the first 20 minutes of your workday learning something new on your company’s internal learning portal and perform the action repeatedly. There will come a time when you open a laptop, and your brain automatically clicks on the learning portal icon.

Another example is your daily commute to work. You become used to taking a specific route to work. So, when you sit in your car, your brain already knows the way, and you won’t even have to think about it.

Relation between micro habits and discipline

The goal is to hack the brain into developing new micro habits on autopilot. However, that requires performing the action at least 66 times. Until then, discipline holds the process together.

You need a system to ensure you consistently practice the small actions until they become second nature, i.e., habits. That’s where a productivity platform like ClickUp with a habit tracker can help.

Pros and cons of adopting micro habits

Pros	Cons
You experience incremental improvement since it is easy to carry out small changes	The same reasons (they’re simple and easy) may make you overlook them or underestimate their impact in the long run
They take little time, resulting in no resistance from the workplace	Results require patience and discipline. You might feel frustrated and unmotivated
Your overall productivity and efficiency at work increases over time
Your self-improvement efforts are taken as a positive sign

The Power of Micro Habits (Backed by Research)

How can these tiny changes bring change to your life? Here are the primary benefits of micro habits.

1. Reduce friction and boost motivation

A big reason for failing to acquire new habits or let go of bad habits is that life or work keeps getting in the way (we hear you!). But a micro habit is so tiny that you can fit it into your schedule even on a busy day. And these small good habits keep giving small rewards that increase dopamine 🤩 and keep you motivated in the long run.

2. Bring incremental changes with long-term results

All the tiny actions you take every day lead to a cycle of continuous improvement. And if you get one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up thirty-seven times better in a year. 🎉

3. Improve well-being

Micro habits bring simple routines into your daily life to achieve more sustainable improvement, reduce stress, and enhance your health.

Storytime: Two researchers from the University of Sherbrooke did a study on microbreaks. They asked 16 surgeons to take 20-second micro-breaks every 20 minutes. The remarkable results were that surgeons who took micro-breaks were seven times more accurate in their postoperative drawings, which are used for maintaining patient records. They also had half the levels of physical fatigue and felt less pain in their backs, necks, shoulders, and wrists. To sum it up, small habits simplify taking care of your health amidst a busy schedule. All of this by just taking out 20 seconds in an hour 😱.

How to Implement Micro Habits in Daily Life: 3 Steps

We have compiled a step-by-step guide below to building micro habits. Let’s go!

1. Set a super easy goal

Set such a small goal that it’s embarrassing even to miss it. For example, if you want to improve your public speaking skills, you can set a small goal of practicing only five minutes of speaking in front of the mirror daily.

Be the person with embarrassing goals and impressive results instead of one of the many people with impressive goals and embarrassing results.

Stephen Guise, Author of the book Mini Habits

2. Create a habit loop

James Clear explains the concept of the habit loop in his book Atomic Habits.

The four steps to create a habit loop are:

1. Define the cue: A cue is an external or internal trigger that initiates the action. Identify the cue which acts as a signal for the habit.

💡Pro tip: You can use productivity platforms like ClickUp to get reminders as regular cues and build self-discipline.

2. Identify the craving: The intended action should be attractive to trick your brain into it. For example, practicing five minutes of speaking in front of the mirror boosts confidence.

3. Determine the response: What action will you take? For building public speaking skills, the micro habit in action would be to pick a topic relevant to your work and speak on it for five minutes.

4. Find your reward: Identify your reward and what will keep you motivated. For example, marking the micro habit actions complete on your to-do list can increase good ‘ol dopamine.

Tasks with status and start date in ClickUp

3. Reflect on your habits periodically

Take a few minutes at regular intervals to check if you’re consistent with your habits or if there are any hiccups.🚧

💡Pro tip: Use ClickUp Goals to set personal and professional goals, divide them into smaller targets as tasks, and visualize your current progress in the dashboard.

Harnessing Technology for Micro Habits

While any new habit formation is tough, you have the technology to your rescue. ✨

The following three platforms will help you plan, track, and optimize your micro habits.

1. ClickUp

ClickUp is a one-stop productivity platform for setting, managing, and tracking your professional and personal habits. You can set goals, divide them into smaller targets, set periodic tasks using ClickUp’s recurring tasks feature, and put your micro habits into action. With ClickUp’s Calendar and the ClickUp Dashboard, you get a bird’s-eye view of your goals, making it a perfect habit-tracking and development tool.

2. Habitica

Habitica is a gamified habit-improvement app designed to improve productivity and build motivation. You create your avatar and to-do lists within the app.

Failing to accomplish those tasks in real life will result in your avatar’s health deteriorating.

Saving your avatar becomes the motivation. 🙌

3. Way of Life

Way of Life is meant for habit-tracking with features like streaks similar to Snapchat. You can track any three habits and view how you score against each. The app also uses visual elements like graphs and charts to elevate your habit-tracking experience.

Seven Micro Habits Examples for Productivity and Professional Skills

1. Create a task list daily

Creating a daily task list and defining priorities is one of the habits of highly effective people. Using ClickUp, you can create a task and define its priority as low, high, normal, or urgent.

💡Pro tip: Have trouble sticking to your task list? Get a friend to send you a nudge daily… Or just get ClickUp to be your accountability partner!

2. Delegate a simple task each day

As you move up the corporate ladder, delegation becomes essential so you can start focusing on more strategic tasks. Start small by delegating daily tasks to improve your delegation skills.

3. Spend 20 minutes every day on learning something new

You can polish the skills required to excel in current or future roles by simply keeping a small time window to focus on learning each day. The learning adds up and brings you closer to where you want to be. Develop a work habit of spending 20 minutes on learning on working days.

💡Pro tip: Research suggests that we retain new information better if we repeat it, either by telling someone or by writing it down. Use collaborative ClickUp Docs or even the easy-to-use Notepad to record your learning!

4. Reduce your cut-off time by five minutes every day

Suppose you aim to achieve a better work-life balance and are working beyond usual hours. You can advance your log-off time by five minutes daily until you reach your ideal cut-off time. ⏰

5. Set aside 20 minutes each week for reflection

Self-reflection helps you analyze the current status of your goals and assess what’s working and what’s not. This is also helpful for your personal growth.

You can find answers to questions like:

Are you meeting your regular targets? If not, what’s preventing you from doing so?
Are you seeing any positive impact of a habit and want to double down on it?
Are your goals still relevant to where you wish to reach in your work life?

Set aside 20 minutes on your calendar weekly to complete such self-reflection.

💡Pro tip: You can integrate your Google calendar with ClickUp and block time for reflection periodically.

Also Read: Time management strategies to keep you productive

6. Practice public speaking for five minutes every day

You need to express your thoughts coherently to excel at work. This is even more important if you’re in a leadership role that requires communication across stakeholders or addressing a larger audience. You can improve your public speaking skills by starting small and speaking for five minutes on any relevant topic in front of a mirror.

💡Pro tip: Create a list of relevant topics in advance to reduce the friction of finding a topic every time. You can simply pick a topic from the list and get started. Keep the list accessible and shareable (get friends to add ideas!) by creating an online list with ClickUp.

Create a list of relevant topics in advance to reduce the friction of finding a topic every time. You can simply pick a topic from the list and get started.

If you find watching cute dog videos on Instagram is your biggest productivity killer, it’s time to reduce your social media usage.

Reducing Instagram screen time from 1.5 hours to 20 minutes a day could be a tough target to achieve, considering how addictive social media is. You decide to watch just one last reel before closing the app and before you realize it’s an hour already!

Start small by reducing your social media time by five minutes daily.

Four Simple Micro Habits To Implement in Your Life Today

Here are examples of daily micro habits you can build for your physical and mental well-being.

1. Work out for 15 minutes

Have you been trying for a long time to fit hitting the gym into your routine? You go to the gym for three days, skip two, and return to square one. Why not try a 15-minute home workout every day until the fitness regime becomes essential to your daily routine?

2. Read one page of a book daily

Instead of aiming to read 18 books in a year, start with one page a day. You’ll develop a reading habit and maybe even cross the 18-book mark. 🎯

3. Walk around for five minutes each hour at work

Are back-to-back meetings keeping you glued to your seat?

Set a reminder to get up from your seat every hour. For people with sedentary jobs, standing up and walking around for five minutes each hour at work elevates mood and decreases food cravings at the end of the day. No more late-night pizzas or revenge procrastination!

4. Journal for five minutes

Writing down all your feelings and getting everything out of your head? Sounds relaxing already!

Journaling is known to reduce stress and anxiety. You can better reflect on situations in hindsight, especially when you put the entire situation down in words. Build a new habit of journaling for five minutes daily for your mental well-being. 🌻

Also read: The best apps for bullet journaling

Overcoming Hurdles While Building Micro Habits

1. Switching back to old ways

The prefrontal cortex part of the brain is responsible for planning, decision-making, and self-control. It often overrules the basal ganglia and tries to switch back to the old ways or routines.

💡Solution: Use ClickUp Reminders to get regular notifications of the new habit till it gets ingrained in your daily routine.

2. Underestimating the impact of your new habits

Because micro habits are so tiny, they don’t have an immediate impact. It’s easy to deprioritize them against other important tasks.

💡Solution: Use ClickUp’s Task Priorities feature to mark priorities on each task. It will help you visualize what you’re working on and not just run after quick wins. You can also set an automation to send you nudges for your high-priority tasks, so you keep them in your sights.

3. Facing the plateau effect

Your progress with tiny habits begins to plateau after a while, making it seem that you’re no longer making any real progress. This is also when most people gradually stop following their new habits due to broken morale or lost confidence.

💡Solution: Plateaus are signs that you’ve reached optimum efficiency with a particular habit. It means you’re past a certain level and need to amp up the challenge. Try allocating a bit more time and effort to your already-honed habits. For instance, start reading five pages of a book instead of two. It will help you overcome the plateau and get back on track to achieve a long-term goal.

4. Inability to track goal performance

Out of sight, out of mind! Unless you write down your ambitious goals and track your task completion figures, you will likely forget about them or not be motivated enough to chase them.

💡Solution: Use technology! Goal-tracking apps like ClickUp are excellent for assessing your performance and managing personal and professional goals. Dashboards give a quick view of your goals and show if you’re meeting the targets. Alternatively, you can try these 10 free habit tracker templates in Google Sheets.

Embrace Tiny Habits for Growth!

Micro habits offer a good starting point to becoming healthier, more productive, and more confident for your professional and personal growth. Identify the big goals you wish to achieve and start building the tiny habits that will lead you to them. But don’t leave it up to willpower to continue those habits.

Remember to build a system that will help you track habits and reflect on them. As James Clear says, “The purpose of setting goals is to win the game. The purpose of building systems is to continue playing the game.”

ClickUp is one of the most popular and highest-rated habit and task management apps, ensuring you stay on top of your micro habits. You can set goals and reminders, build dashboards, define custom notifications, and personalize features to match your unique needs and preferences. Sign up for free to adopt good micro habits and step up your daily productivity levels.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

1. What are micro habits?

Micro habits are small behaviors that achieve big results through lasting change, improving your personal and professional life.

2. How do you make micro habits?

You can make micro habits by breaking down large goals into small tasks that are easy to follow and maintain daily. Examples include drinking a glass of water every hour, stretching for five minutes twice a day, or reading one or two pages of your favorite book every day without fail.

3. What are micro changes?

Micro changes are tiny adjustments to life that may seem insignificant in the short run but can help you achieve big results down the line. These small changes in your new behavior don’t require much hard work and are aimed toward gradual progress as a person and professional.

For example, start eating fruit at lunch to boost your nutrient intake without overwhelming yourself with a complete diet change.

Or track the time you spend on projects to identify areas for better time management.

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