Micro habits are the key to widening the gap between people

The difference between being poor and being rich is really not just money, but also those life-changing micro-habits.

Author: Lin Zi Xuan (Rich Book Author)

Have you ever had such doubts?

Have you ever wondered what the difference is between those who were once on par with you and those who suddenly became very rich after a few years, and you are still spinning your wheels? ......

The American author Thomas Corey has spent five years doing research to find the answer to this question.

He interviewed 233 rich people who started with nothing and 128 poor people and found that out of a 24-hour day, 1,440 minutes, everyone spends 1,200 minutes on everyday things such as eating and sleeping, while for the remaining short 240 minutes, their habits appear significantly different.

88% of the rich would get used to reading for at least 30 minutes a day, while the majority of the poor were used to entertainment and hardly any study.

240 minutes of habits lead people who once looked at similar strengths to different fates.

The difference between the poor and the rich is not just money, but also those micro habits that change a life.

Cao Dewang, the "King of Chinese Glass", did not even graduate from primary school due to poverty, but he always had a micro habit: insisting on reading for 2 hours every day.

Li Ka-shing, the richest man in Asia, built his fortune from nothing and still maintains three micro-habits: reading every day before going to bed, watching 20 minutes of English TV after dinner, and listening to radio news reports every day.

They have all developed "self-improvement" as a habit in their lives.

People don't have good habits only when they are good, but when they have good habits, they become good at what they do.

A small act of inertia has a pervasive effect from your temperament and personality to your body and mind.

David Nevins once spoke at TED: "Tiny habits have tremendous power, and adopting beneficial habits can lead to more positive changes."

What are micro-habits?

In Microhabits, author Stephen defines a 'microhabit' in this way: a microhabit is a small, positive behaviour that you force yourself to do every day.

Do you remember Lei Haiwei, the delivery boy who beat a master from Peking University and won the Chinese Poetry Contest against all odds?

Many people were amazed at how he managed to cultivate his success. He said he would take out the Three Hundred Tang Poems to recite a couple of lines every time he was in between waiting for his meal.

This micro-habit allowed him to accumulate over time, and he eventually shone on stage, becoming a formidable figure that even Dong Qing praised again and again.

People often say that knowing is easier than doing, and that wanting to change means struggling with your own bad habits, so fighting against them naturally feels tough.

Just like many people know the benefits of reading a book, they want to open it, but subconsciously they are used to opening their mobile phones and brushing up on ShakeYin and Weibo, and in a flash, two hours have passed and they haven't turned a page.

Erasmus said, "One nail squeezes out another, and habits are replaced by habits."

Developing 'micro-habits' is a great way to combat this. It's a zero-burden approach that greatly reduces your resistance and makes it easy to take action to change yourself.

Have you experienced any of the 'pitfalls' of developing habits?

My good friend Ah Ching has always been interested in writing, and in order to work on her writing ideas, she decided to develop the micro-habit of recording her inspiration in her circle of friends every day.

She started to pump herself up every day, telling herself that she wanted to be a better writer.

At first, she would insist on recording seven or eight entries every day, and after only a week, she was like a deflated balloon and stopped posting circles.

Sing used the chicken-blood approach, also called the motivation strategy, that many people tend to take when cultivating the process, but it is often easy to surrender to the odds.

Stephen mentioned that relying entirely on motivation to drive yourself to cultivate habits is actually a pitfall for the following reasons.

1. Motivation is difficult to develop on demand: we all have times when we are not in our element, when motivation is not used at our disposal.

2, motivation is susceptible to unpleasant events: people will inevitably be affected by negative emotions, such as you want to go to the gym, out of the traffic jam, it is possible to cause emotional slack, weakening motivation.

3., the law of diminishing enthusiasm: after doing the same thing for a long time, enthusiasm will slowly fade, and motivation is slowly disappearing.

The willpower strategy allows us to achieve our goals better than the motivation strategy.

Willpower is more consistent, reliable and motivating.

For example, if we want to get into the habit of running, we can use the willpower strategy and tell ourselves that we will not rest until we finish running today, forcing ourselves to complete the daily task.

Stick with it for a few days and when you feel more and more refreshed after exercising, that's when motivation increases rapidly.

How can lazy people develop good habits effortlessly?

With the help of the micro habit strategy, you can quickly develop a good habit in just the following 8 steps.

1. Choose the right micro-habit and plan for you.

First make a brief list of the habits you want to develop, then filter the important ones to develop. It is recommended that the number of habits should not exceed four, too many tend to deplete willpower.

Stick with it for a week for an initial assessment and to choose a long-term plan.

If something doesn't fit into a daily routine, it can be developed into a weekly or monthly micro-habit.

2. Tap into the intrinsic value of each micro-habit.

Ask yourself a few more times why you want to develop these micro-habits, find the value level and strengthen your belief.

For example: I want to write every day, why? Because I love writing.

Why? Because this form of expression is what I enjoy most, connecting with people through writing.

Why is this important? Because writing is something that I find valuable and value extremely highly.

3. Define the basis for the habit and incorporate it into your agenda.

There are two common bases for developing habits, time and behaviour.

Choose to develop them based on time, e.g. "I'm going to read at 10pm every night".

The behavioural basis for the habit is, for example, 'I'm going to start reading after lunch'.

As for which one to choose, it can be decided according to oneself, just like Lei Haiwei, he will use his work to recite poems to accumulate.

4. Establish a reward mechanism to enhance the sense of achievement with rewards.

If you are writing, you can celebrate writing a full document, even if what you achieve is only the minimum requirement, it is still laying a good foundation.

When you can't keep going, you can also reward yourself by taking a break to restore your willpower to keep going.

5. Record and track completion.

It is advisable to write by hand and put ideas down on paper to make them more prominent in your brain and make you more sensitive to cultivating progress and success or otherwise.

Remember not to set any vague goals as this will lack clear direction and poor execution.

After a few days of completion you will have a chain of behaviours and the only thing you have to do next is not to break it and let it slowly become a habit.

6. Start in tiny amounts and overachieve.

Why do we make small habits when we can obviously set higher goals? Because everything is hard at the beginning.

Seeing ourselves willing to take action can motivate persistence, and even if we're doing something small, it can still become a habit and create great power.

By constantly forcing ourselves to perform achievable tasks, we are also strengthening our willpower and making us more able to overachieve.

7. Obey the schedule and get rid of high expectations.

We need to put our expectations and energy into sticking to our goals, rather than having high expectations about the amount of tasks to be performed.

When non-habits become habits, it means that your confrontation with your brain has turned into cooperation and is very conducive to developing big habits.

8. Look out for the signs of habit formation.

Signs that your behaviour has become habitual are: no resistance, identity (e.g. "I read a lot"), no need to think when you act, no longer worry about doing it, it has become normalised, and it feels boring (good habits don't excite people).

A list of 8 effective and useful micro habits to keep

1. Read 2 pages of a book

Stop swiping your phone before bed and read 2 pages of a book to build up your knowledge base and enrich yourself over time.

2、Record your expenses

Keeping a fixed time to record your spending for the day and knowing where every penny goes will be very helpful in managing your money.

3、Copy a poem

Copy a poem every day and recite it, persistently, and your connotation will be greatly enhanced.

4、Exercise for 10 minutes

Spend 10 minutes a day doing an aerobic or strength training exercise to strengthen your body.

5、Record 1 thing that you have achieved

Writing down something you feel accomplished every day, even if it is a small improvement, will not only grow your confidence, but also help to maintain a positive mindset.

6、Remember one word a day

One word a day will help you remember more than 300 words a year, whether you are studying for an exam or learning a small language.

7. Review and summarise

Every day you work, take a few minutes to record what you did that day, how long it took, what you gained and what you reflected on. Improve problems and make progress in a timely manner.

8、Quickly read the news

Get up early every day and quickly browse the news bulletin to keep up with the current situation and expand your horizons.

Write at the end

In an interview, Yang Chenyu, the top student in Guangxi, once said that she never attended classes, but had a habit of taking stock and reflecting whether it was a month or a week or a day.

Yang Chenyu's mother, when asked how she raised her academic child, had this to say: "You must help your child develop habits when he is not autonomous. Once it's established, the rest of the way will be easier."

Parents need the support of micro-habit strategies, and children's education is even more indispensable.

Steve Jobs once said, "In the first 30 years of your life, you develop habits; in the second 30 years of your life, habits shape you."

It is better to teach a child a good habit than to lecture him or her a thousand times.

There is also this line from the TV series The Age of Awakening, with which I strongly identify.

"In this impetuous age, only those who are self-disciplined can stand out and achieve great things."

Every micro-habit you develop is strengthening your self-disciplined personality, forming a positive virtuous circle that helps you to achieve rapid advancement in life.

Your good fortune is actually hidden in your micro habits.