a practice that will change how you approach habits

If you are into habit-tracking, productivity, and general self-improvement, you’ve come to the right place. I have been obsessed with these things since I first learned how to write. I got my first day-planner at the age of 9. It was a hand-me-down and a year out of date, but I loved that Brownline. I would scribble notes in the margins, cut out pages, and add stickers as the fancy struck me. I often wrote long, improbable to-do lists. I relished any opportunity to write things down.

However, as the years passed and I got older, my plans started to feel more like pipe dreams. My goals seemed too lofty and unattainable, so I gave up on them early in the process. I didn’t know how to go about achieving things in a way that felt sustainable.

I read book after book by greats like Jon Acuff, James Clear, and Malcolm Gladwell, all championing rallying cries like “All it takes is a goal!” and “Persistence will win the day!” It sounded good on paper, but in practice, I was struggling. I now realize that I was trying to bite off more than I could chew, but at the time, my idealism made me feel I could be great without any real work. I mistakenly believed that a goal would be a quick process and that I would instantly be propelled into the spotlight with my revolutionary ideas and methods and the sheer volume of my accomplishments.

Habits are a lot of work. Talk to anyone who has set a New Years Resolution. Maybe you’ve been there, pen in hand, feeling like everything will magically change along with the new year. New year, new me! It’s easy to commit to running every day until you start lacing up your shoes and realize I don’t want to do this! It’s easy to write a list of goals, but translating these aspirations into real change is a completely different race altogether. As the old saying goes, it’s a marathon, not a sprint. That means we have to train differently.

Often, we can sustain a habit over the short term, but when things get tough and we aren’t seeing the same massive progress we experienced at the beginning, we get discouraged and give up. Forgive me for all the running illustrations, but that is a goal I’m working on right now. My mother-in-law is a superstar. She is in her 50s, but you’d never guess it by the way she crushes half-marathons and 10ks like it’s nothing more than a jaunt around the block. My goal is to one day run a 5k race with her. So with that in mind, I started running in July last year.

At first, I tried to make running more appealing by pairing it with something fun. I allowed myself to watch a show only if I were running. I’m sure I looked absolutely insane to my neighbours, running in place in my kitchen, my laptop in front of me. I felt insane, but I also felt good. I was actually working towards my goal. I found that I was able to run for up to thirty minutes at a time right off the bat, and that instant win encouraged me. I liked this system.

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After about a month of regular running, our rhythms were entirely upended with summer trips, camping, and little time at home. I couldn’t find much time for running, and I felt I was losing all my progress. I only ran three times during the entire month of August. And then my running routine underwent another, far more drastic change.

Up until now, I’d been doing my runs solo. Lars would work out in the basement while I would spend time running, watching my show, and then eventually retreating to the couch to finish the episode of whatever I was watching. But this routine was starting to feel a little dull to me. Then, Lars expressed his own desire to start doing more cardio to improve his heart health. So, we went on a run outside together.

Friend, it was HORRIBLE.

I thought I’d made serious progress in terms of my ability to run. But Lars has long legs and his lungs are better than mine. Even without any training, he easily outran me. We ran 3km that day and it took us 24 minutes and loads of walking breaks. I felt like my lungs were on fire. I also felt discouraged. I hadn’t realized how different running in place was to real, bonafide running.

However, despite this disappointing result, I have grown a lot since my 9-year-old days of expecting instantaneous improvement. I decided to keep showing up. At least three nights a week, Lars and I would tie our shoes, set our running trackers, and race off into the cool of the evening.

And slowly, bit by bit, we got better. We started out running 1km per night. That was doable. I still had to stop for breaks to breathe, but it got easier. A couple of weeks in, I was able to complete our 1km course without stopping. We took our time down from 15 minutes to eight. That felt unreal to me!

Now obviously, when you first start out at something, the initial progress is going to be a lot bigger than subsequent progress. You’re going from zero to 100 with a single run, so at first, it’s going to feel like you’re making rapid leaps and bounds. But if you keep at it, slowly the results taper off. What was once exponential growth—new stats every night—will become an everyday occurrence. That steady consistency is still growth though. Even though not much is changing, your mentality has changed. You start to realize that goals are actually attainable, you just have to break them into manageable chunks. Sure, Lars and I aren’t likely to halve the time it takes us to run 1km anytime soon, if ever, but our lungs have increased in capacity. Our legs are stronger. Our hearts are healthier.

And it all happened one run at a time.

Small progress is still progress. Showing up every day is progress. Not having anything to show for your efforts is actually one of the least important things. I can’t stress this enough. Consistency on its own is a sort of progress, too.

Often, results feel invisible. Especially if you’ve gotten over the hump of starting something and are plodding along, one day at a time, one consistent moment after another. Growth isn’t often glamorous. It’s usually found in the quiet nooks and crannies of the everyday. It’s found in lacing up your runners to go on a run yet again to maintain the progress that you’ve built up over time. Growth is found in reading five pages because five pages are better than zero. Growth is found in spending an evening with your phone turned off when the thought of doing that used to fill you with dread.

Maintenance is growth, too. It’s a quieter, steadier growth. But consistently showing up, even if the results aren’t immediately visible, is still growth. Every day, you are minutely better than you were before. And that, my friend, is the point.

You might not see it now, but you are becoming a more disciplined, stronger, more hopeful version of yourself. All you see is the hard work it takes—and believe me, it is hard—but the maintenance work you’re doing is some of the most important work you will ever do. Not everything has to be, nor will be, exponential growth.

So settle into your routines with renewed fervor, friend, because those micro choices you make everyday are your life. Life is made up of the moments we fill our days with. Day after day choices like reading your Bible daily, going for a walk, or eating more vegetables add up over time, even if you can’t see the effects. You’ve got this! Slow and steady, day after day, keep choosing the things you know are good, healthy, and wise. It’s worth it!