Habits are what dictate much of what we do. We may think that we decide to eat that extra cookie, but really eating cookies is tied to drinking coffee. We’ve done it so many times that we almost can’t have coffee without cookies.

There used to be a book available on Amazon called Tiny Habits, by Michael Minsen, and the goal of the book was to help us build small habits that would have a big impact on our lives.

I say it used to be available because I can find no trace of it now. That’s a bit disappointing since it’s a really quick read and has some practical advice. I’m also not disappointed, but in many ways, it’s so basic.

The purpose of the book is to bring transformation to your life.

This book will help you transform your life for the better just by doing the tiny habits.

It hopes to do this by helping you build good tiny habits. With these building on each other, you’ll start to see your world getting better.

Once your good habits are properly instilled, little by little (if not suddenly) you will notice that you are changing — for the better.

It advocates tiny habits because they’re easy to start and stick with. Unlike huge goals which sit far away and at least slightly nebulous, tiny habits are with us every day.

It is not enough to set a goal with a target date of accomplishing it. It’s like declaring something awesome to achieve and wait for a miracle to happen to make it come true.

In this, it agrees with The 12 Week Year(my review). The 12 Week Year gets you to focus on the actions you need every week to hit your goals in the next 12 weeks. None of this yearly goal crap. 12 weeks is enough to get something done and short enough to keep it top of mind.

So the two books fit very well together on this point. Unfortunately, Tiny Habits makes the point in the first two chapters and then goes downhill in quality.

The introductory few pages (mostly chapter 1 and 2) are the best. After that, skim the book. It’s mostly just a list of the tiny habits that the author thinks you should implement in your life.

They provide few tools for you to take your bad habits and turn them into triggers for good habits. They don’t really provide many tools for you to use to accomplish this goal.

The tiny habit suggestions are good, but it turns out to be a fairly ‘fluffy’ book with suggestions like “Expand your Vocabulary” in the tiny habits. I say fluffy because expanding your vocabulary gets the same level billing as reviewing your day before you go home. Reviewing our day and planning the next one almost always revolutionizes what you get done. Expanding your vocabulary…hogwash.

Recommendation

This seems like a moot point since I can’t see how to purchase the book. But anyway, don’t bother. If you’re interested in changing your work and yourself then read something like Switch by Chip and Dan Heath.

It has much more utility.

photo credit: clement127 cc