ROI

You should think of doing things in terms of return on investment. How much effort/time I put in and what is the expected return of that value.

One of the easiest ways to maximize return on investment is to develop what are known as keystone habits.

Keystone habits are habits that once implemented facilitate other good habits. One example is getting up early.

When you get up early you now have more time to work out. This improves your health. So the implementation of one habit - waking up earlier - facilitates the implementation of another habit working out. 

This is a multiplier effect on your habits. 

Working out improves mode and energy so this can lead to the improvement of habits around communication and patients. 

Which could lead to improvement in your interpersonal relationships and so on and so on. 

All of this improvement is derived from the single decision to wake up early which is a macro decision.

The Benefit of One Pushup A Day

 One of the things I am constantly saying is to do just one pushup a day. 

The reason I phrase it this way is that anyone can do just one pushup a day. From a capacity time standpoint, no matter what your day looks like, how busy it got, how many fires you had to put out at work, how tired you are right before bed there is always time and energy to do one pushup. 

The benefit of doing one pushup a day is not physical, although that is a potential by-product. The benefit comes in habit formation. This is known as a tiny habit. Made famous by behavioral psychologist and author BJ Fogg. 

Change comes from small incremental habits or tiny changes done over long periods of time. 

Fogg talks about this concept in his book Tiny Habits. 

He reduces the concept to the simplest basic component when trying to form a new habit. 

He builds a simple formula 

B= Behavorial 

M = Motivation 

A = Ability 

P = Prompt 

If the ability to do something is hard then the motivation must be high (blue dot). Counter to this if the ability easy then the motivation can be low (red dot).  

This is why doing 1 push-up has its benefits. Doing just one push-up only takes a few seconds can be done almost anywhere, and can even be done right before you get into bed at night. The ability to do one push-up is easy therefore the motivation is low. 

This is the key to have tiny habits. The trick is to find low-ability tasks that require minimal motivation. 

Since motivation is not a reliable source for getting things done on a consistent basis you need triggers or prompts to help you engage in these tiny habits.