Mini Habits

About the book: Mini Habits explains the logic behind an innovative approach to achieving your goals. Motivation and ambition aren't necessarily what will drive you to success; rather, it's your small day-to-day habits that will really get you on the right track. Learn how to harness their power with these blinks.

About the author: Stephen Guise is a writer, blogger and researcher who specializes in personal growth and fun learning. His latest book is called How to Be an Imperfectionist.

My highlights:
Most of our lives are governed by our habits. And a lot of our daily activities are governed by habit
When stressed and incapable of making a decision, we resort to our habits.
The first few weeks will be a struggle because those neural pathways are still weak. But soon enough, your brain will strengthen the connection
Our brains feature a powerful habit-forming system.
The prefrontal cortex has one major flaw: it gets tired fast. Making the right decisions is in fact a huge energy drain. While we might find it easy enough to resist that tub of ice cream in the freezer for most hours of the day, chances are that your prefrontal cortex will give up once it's gotten tired. At this point, your basal ganglia will take over and you'll suddenly find yourself holding a big bowl of cookies and cream again!
Willpower, not motivation, is the best tool for creating good habits.
Willpower's benefits are well known to psychologists.
Every time you create a new positive habit, such as meditating each day, you flex your own willpower muscle.
Willpower, unlike motivation, is dependable. You can build it up, and once you do, you can rely on it.
Mini habits are the most efficient investment for your limited willpower.
You can avoid the loss of willpower with minor, almost ridiculously tiny goals. After all, the main threats to our willpower are effort, perceived difficulty and fatigue – why not choose a target that only takes a little effort?
The greatest hurdle we usually face is the first one: going from inertia to mobility. With a mini habit that helps you start small, you can be sure to start smoothly.
Mini habits have a whole host of additional benefits.
Mini habits are also great at making you feel like you're in control. Humans hate the feeling of being out of control, or worse, being controlled by others. We like to make our own decisions, which is what makes us happiest.
Mini habits boost your self-esteem.
Plan and develop your mini habits carefully.
First, choose your habits wisely. You can start with a list of habits that you'd like to have at some point in your life.
Next, ask yourself why these habits are appealing to you; this is to ensure that you've got the right motivations.
With a list of motivated habits established, it's time to create mini habits to match.
Mini habits shouldn't be daunting at all. They should be so small that you can incorporate several of them into your daily routine, starting out with two or three per day.
Habit cues are signals that remind you it's time to perform your mini habit.
Monitor your progress and don't forget to reward yourself.
It's not just the goal that your habits lead to that's important. Developing a daily routine that is full of helpful rituals is something you can be proud of too.

Final summary
Instead of trying to motivate yourself to achieve daunting goals, take things one step at a time. By building up a routine of positive mini habits, you'll give yourself the chance to enjoy small successes every day, while making real progress toward your true aspirations.