One Simple Thing

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”

“You eat an elephant one bite at a time.”

“Every step takes you closer to, or farther from, your goal.”

There are plenty of motivational quotes and wisdom from ancient philosophers that allude to this, but with anything great you want to accomplish in life you have to start with a single step or a small bite.

In the book Atomic Habits by James Clear he talks about why small habits make a big difference. He referenced a British cycling team that had suffered for over 100 years of mediocrity. They hired a new performance director who committed to a strategy to find any little thing that would make a marginal gain. He studied uniform material in a wind tunnel to reduce drag, pillows and mattresses to improve quality of sleep, electrically heated short overlays for optimal muscle temperature, biofeedback sensors after training, and even types of massage gels to aid in faster muscle recovery. Five years after the performance director took over, the British cycling team dominated the road and track cycling events in 2008, and four years later they won 60% of the gold medals in Beijing. Then again in four years the team set nine Olympic records and seven world records in London.

Start With One Simple Thing

To get started on your journey, try to figure out One Simple Thing you can do to take you one step closer to your goal. Once you have completed that simple thing, or made it a part of your everyday life, move on to another simple thing.  Continue with this pattern and step-by-step, bite-by-bite, you will move closer and closer to your goal.

Here are some examples:

Do you want to lose weight but can’t seem stick to a diet?

Then try cutting out sodas (even diet ones) and replace them with water.  Or replace junk food snacks with something healthy.

Do you need to start exercising but don’t know what to do first?

Get off the sofa and take a 20 minute walk every day, or sign up for a class at a gym or rec center. 

Thinking of a career change, or trying to move up in your existing career?

Read a book about something you want to learn, or watch a YouTube course. Sign up for some online courses you can take at night.

Whatever your goal is, pick One Simple Thing and complete it. Then pick another simple thing you can do to get closer to your goal and begin to implement it. Rinse and repeat and you will make continual progress.

So how do I figure out my One Simple Thing?

You’ve also heard the quote “begin with the end in mind“, and while that is certainly valuable and you need an ultimate end goal, you can also wind up suffering from analysis paralysis and get so overwhelmed that you wind up not doing anything.  I’ve lost count of how many times this has happened to me.

A good way to find your first step is to plan out whatever steps you need to take to reach your goal. Once you have the individual steps listed out, pick the One Simple Thing you want to start with and figure out what you need to do to make that one thing happen.

It may take multiple steps to reach your goal, and some of those steps may have multiple steps of their own. That’s ok, once you get everything broken down you can figure out what step to start on and just work on it. You can do it, you just have to make up your mind to start.

It’s time for you to take that first step.