Only Baby Steps

Progress is tiring, isn’t it?

I mean, even just the thought of making positive changes can be terrifying and exhausting, let alone actually going it. And I’m not even being facetious here. I mean it!

Look, anyone who knows me knows that I’m pretty good at getting myself motivated to go after the things I want in life. I run marathons. I’ve made career swings. I’ve learned multiple instruments. My houseplants are watered and the toilets have all been cleaned at least once in the past week. I’m aware that it can sound like I’m just trying to be relatable when I say things like, “getting stuff done is hard.”

But it is. Even for me.

I’m constantly fighting with the urge to give into my propensity for depression and stop caring about my health and just lay around, replaying Paper Marion and the Thousand Year Door and eating enough sweets to lose track of how many I’ve eaten. That all sounds so AWESOME right now!

And that’s largely because that all sounds so easy right now. My Gamecube is right there, we have a substantial chunk of leftover sheet cake in our fridge, and it’s a Friday night. But as easy as that would all be, I also know that I want to accomplish more than being a slob.

The good news is that even though things like training for marathons, learning skills for job switches, or even cleaning the apartment sound hard, I know a trick for making it easy and getting it all done!

Photo by Jukan Tateisi on Unsplash

Only Baby Steps

It’s so cliched it hardly feels worth it to write a full article about it. But the number of people in my life who express that they find me inhuman for my ability to get crap done tells me that it bears repeating. Maybe they’ve never thought of this or maybe they have and just need someone else to verify it and set them on the path.

I don’t know. I’m not psychic.

I’m just a guy who does a few simple things every day and eventually finds it turned into something pretty neat.

And that’s the process I’m about to break down for you!

The First Step

This is the most baby of all the babiest baby steps that have ever been babied, baby!

Real talk, the first step can and should be the easiest thing you’ve ever done in your life because getting started is almost always the most intimidating part of any effort ever.

I mean, think about it. How many of us just let the shed stay cluttered for years because every time we look at it we get overwhelmed and find it much happier to close the door and pretend nothing happened? Or how many of us take years to start working out because we look at ourselves in the mirror with our low self-esteem and can’t even imagine what we would look like the chiseled abs and a jag so strong you could do pullups while chewing?

When you have big goals, getting started seems so daunting. And a lot of people are often inclined to say that it means we should make our goals smaller. This is fine advice. It’s good to keep goals realistic and achievable. But I maintain that it’s realistic and achievable for anyone to do something big like run a marathon. It’s not that the goal is too big. It’s that the path is long and that feels intimidating.

So don’t change the goal. Just take a baby step.

Don’t run a marathon at first. Don’t even run a mile at first.

Run to the bathroom.

Seriously.

Make it that small.

Everyone can run to the bathroom. And if you don’t think you can chug a lot of coffee with a scoop of Metamucil instead of sugar and take a nap. You’ll wake up and really see just how fast you can run!

Jokes aside, there is no amount of running that is too small for your first go. One step is fine.

Just one baby step.

Because all you’re doing is starting. And any amount more than zero is an infinitely bigger amount. This goes for anything. Wiping down one counter is infinitely bigger than not cleaning anything. Memorizing one word is infinitely more than knowing nothing about speaking a foreign language. Playing one note is infinitely more musical than never picking up a guitar.

You’re not finishing the goal at the beginning. You’re just taking a baby step forwards.

The Next Steps

I know, I know. It’s easy to act like that’s the solution. Just getting started. But one step out of a marathon isn’t hardly more than 0% of a marathon.

That’s true.

I recognize that taking the smallest step doesn’t necessarily make the journey to a goal seem closer or less intimidating. Doing one pushup doesn’t much feel like you’re closer to having cut pecks and triceps that could make men swoon. Tooting one toot on a trumpet doesn’t do much to make someone start seeing themselves as Dizzy Gillespie.

And here’s the hardest part; it doesn’t actually get easier.

The good news is that the reason it doesn’t get easier is because every single step is as easy as that first baby step. I’ll get into the why of it soon, but for the moment, just really internalize what I’m saying.

Remember how I said your first run can be as simple as running to the crapper? Well, your next run, whenever you get to it, can be literally that distance plus one step. That’s all. And if your baseline was going to the bathroom, then you just set your baseline further ahead. And I guarantee you can do that because nobody looks at a single step and sees that as impossible. So just go as far as you know you can go and go one step further.

It’s the same for everything.

If you’re baseline for cleaning is putting away one pair of socks, then next time just do a pair of socks and a pair of undies. If you’re baseline for reading is reading one page in a day, do two the next day.

Summary Number One

I have more points to make but I want to take a second to summarize here, because I know I’m getting a little wordy and I want to make sure I’m being clear.

What I’m getting at here is that no single effort ever needs to be more than the most minute improvement from your most recent best.

People get so hung up on trying to race to the finish for their goals. They want to bench press their body weight. They want to remodel their entire house. They want to write a book. These are big goals and it can feel like such an undertaking to go after them.

But every goal can be broken down into steps so small they feel silly. Exercising can be increasing your lifting weights by one pound every week. Fixing up your house can be as simple as replacing one floorboard each day. Writing a book can be as simple as writing one sentence per day.

Sure, I know that any of these things are more efficient to take bigger steps. I’m not saying that its best to do things in such small partitions and I’m going to address that in a bit. Just understand that what I am saying is that any of these can be done with steps so small that it takes less than two minutes of effort to make progress.

Okay, let’s add a few more points to this.

It Should Feel Easy

Remember what I said about how we all want to do the lazy things because they’re so easy?

Yeah.

Duh.

We always want to do easy things! They’re easy! That’s the point! Things that are easy are fun! Fast food! Sleeping! Sleeping with your mom!

Zing! Gottem!

For real though, we will all do the easy things all day long. There’s a lot of science behind that but I’m not going into it because I’m not qualified to.

Now, it’s true that sometimes we can feel immense satisfaction at getting something hard done. But we’re not talking about finishing things. We’re talking about doing things. That’s why I say that baby steps should feel easy. It’s right for them to feel easy. Because if it’s easy you’ll actually do it.

Examples!

Running a marathon sounds super-duper hard, so people aren’t going to sign up for marathons. But running just a few steps is easy. Everyone can do it. So don’t start off trying to run a marathon. Start off trying to run a few steps. Then try to run a few more next time. And again and again and again until, one day, you’re just a few steps away from a marathon.

Building a coffee table sounds super hard to some people. Don’t start off building a coffee table. Start off cutting some wood to level out a stool at home. Then try just building a box. Then get a new tool and make the box look a little nicer. Pretty soon you’ll have done enough projects that building a table feels easy.

Cleaning a messy house can feel daunting, especially if it’s a trainwreck from depression or raising kids or any number of other circumstances. But throwing away a piece of trash is an easy enough step. So do that. Then throw away a couple more. Then wipe down a surface. Then, one day, you’ll realize that your house is tidy and doing things like tossing away the junk mail right away comes as second nature.

All of this is easy and this idea of doing more easy things is the next point.

Momentum Builds

You can always keep making progress in as minimal of a way as baby steps. You never, ever have to progress any faster than adding one more baby step onto the last effort. It can take years to accomplish something that some people do in a week, and that is okay. Because it’s you making your progress in baby steps that are manageable for you.

But what you’ll probably find is that, as you go, you’ll take bigger and bigger baby steps.

That’s because momentum is something that builds over time and, once you have it, it’s a lot harder to stop.

Cleaning can be done one piece of trash per day forever. That’s perfectly fine and that is positive effort. But most people eventually find that they have it in them to let cleaning be a twenty minute process that handles multiple rooms at once. It may take a year for someone to go from not running to running a 5k but then do a half-marathon seven months later.

The thing of it all is that baby steps are less of a finite thing and more of a relative thing. A baby step is relative to your minimal effort. It’s the same as the “be 1% better than yesterday” concept. If you’re base is better than zero, you’re baby step will be a bit bigger. The important part isn’t how big the step is, the important part is that it feels easy.

Breaks And Backsteps

Here is arguably the most important part of this because nobody is perfect. Nobody is always making positive steps all the time. Sometimes we pause and sometimes we take steps backwards. Sometimes we’re just not in the mood to practice an instrument. Sometimes we’re sick and we just have to take extra rest days instead of getting to the gym. Sometimes you just can’t bring yourself to get out of bed and clean the kitchen.

This is all okay. This isn’t undoing all of the work you’ve done thus far.

I like to think of it this way. No singular baby step forward ever completed a goal, so no singular baby step backwards ever trashes a goal. Eating one salad won’t lose you ten pounds, so eating one extra piece of pizza won’t make you gain ten pounds. Going for one swim won’t make you Michael Phelps, so skipping one swim won’t make you forget how to swim.

So on and so forth.

So, give yourself a gosh-darned break! Trust me, I know how important this is because I’m the worst at doing it. I’m the guy that will miss one workout and then look at myself in the mirror and be convinced that I’ll be completely incapable of even climbing the stairs the next day because my health and fitness will completely tank from the inconsistency.

But it won’t! Just as long as you take a baby step forward next time it’ll only take that one effort to regain the ground you lost.

Keep Track

So, hopefully by now you get the point.

Take baby steps that feel easy and keep doing it to achieve your goals.

Simple idea, though not always obvious.

But the final thing that I would encourage you to do is find some way to record your progress. Doesn’t have to be every time and it can really be in whatever way is meaningful for you. Heck, don’t even track your progress. Just keep a reminder of your first step. Even just a memory is great.

I’ll share an example from my life.

Through almost my entire childhood I was not an active person. I was overweight and had no interest in sports, mostly because I was so ashamed of how silly I would look if I tried to do things that other kids were already good at. I was looking at the goals and being too intimidated by the distance to them to try.

But one day I did take a baby step.

I had friends joining the tennis team my freshman year in high school and I decided to give it a try. First practice we had to run around the neighborhood. Maybe a mile total, but probably not even. Everyone on the team finished in a reasonable amount of time.

Except me.

I finished probably somewhere in 15–20 minutes. When I finally made it back to the courts, the rest of the team was already working on their drills, and I was about ready to die. I was so embarrassed.

My next baby step was when I was so embarrassed that I called up my cousin who was a body builder at the time and asked him to teach me what to do so that I could be less pathetic. He brought me to the gym with him on shoulder day. I didn’t even lift any weight. I just mimicked his movements on empty machines. I was so tired at the end of it that I couldn’t even wash my hair because I couldn’t get my hands up to my head.

Baby steps.

Granted, I wasn’t as smart about those baby steps because they were not easy. But from those baselines I did start taking baby steps. Mostly because I was afraid of the pain of working too hard. But I kept doing it and throughout high school there eventually came times that I was teaching my friends how to lift weights and signing up for my first 5k. Took years to get there. But I did it.

Fifteen more years of baby steps and I ran my first marathon a few years ago. Right now, I’m baby stepping my way towards a faster marathon time by increasing my target speeds by about five-seconds per mile every ten weeks. The steps are that small. But if I keep up with it I might qualify for the Boston Marathon in a couple years.

So why am I sharing this? Because I remember where I started and I can look back and realize that nowadays, even on my worst day when I’m too tired or depressed to even run at all, my baby step backwards from skipping that run has me immeasurably further ahead of where I would have even dreamed. Because I can also remember that all I wanted after that first day of tennis practice, was to run a mile without having to stop so that I wouldn’t be so ashamed of myself. My first fitness goal is less than what my current warmup is.

All because of baby steps.

Summary Number Two

I sort of summed it up already above.

Give me a break.

I’m only two years into the journey of trying to become a writer. Today’s baby step is just posting anything at all because I’ve written three different drafts this week and haven’t posted any of them. Just posting this is a baby step forward. And I’m betting that if I look back at the first article I ever wrote I’ll see that this one is way better.

That’s the point of this all.

Again, I understand that sometimes taking action and making changes is far easier said than done. But that’s why we take baby steps. They’re steps so small and easy that even a baby can do them, after all.

Seriously, any step at all is big enough as long as it’s a step. Trying to quit smoking? When you feel the craving, start a timer and wait one minute before you light up. It’s not much and people might clown you for only lasting a minute (that’s what she said ZING!). But it’s progress and as small as it is, it’s more than if you caved at the first sign of craving.

Anyone is capable of anything, because everyone is capable of the bare minimum. I might look at someone like Alex Honnold and think that I’ll never be a good rock climber. But I don’t have to be him off the bat. I don’t even have to try to be him. I just have to grab the rock and lift myself off the ground. That’s the baby step and it’s further than never starting.

So, the moral of the story is this: no matter what you’re putting off and no matter what the reason is, take the absolute smallest step possible towards that thing. And there you go. You started. From there, it’s all a matter of putting that same effort forth again next time.

I have faith in you.