I don’t know about you, but I love setting goals. I love getting clear on what I’d like to improve in my life, the feeling that I’m on a path somewhere, I’m looking towards a destination, and I’m growing in some way. Whether or not you share this love (I know the topic of goals is a turn-off for many people too!), we all encounter big aims, projects, desires, intentions—whatever you want to call them—in life. Sometimes, these are clear and actionable from the start. Stop eating cheese? Sure, OK. Done!
Sometimes, though, these goals feel overwhelming and open a pandora’s box worth of questions we don’t yet have answers to. Make more friends? Err… Become more confident? Ah… Start a business? Um… More often than not, these are the big goals, the ones that open new doors, change lives, and lead to new possibilities we can’t even see yet. We know pursuing these goals will be important and worthwhile. But there, at the beginning, they just feel uncertain and overwhelming. This is especially true if we’re starting from a place of feeling dissatisfied, drained, and unsure of how on earth we can possibly get from where we are now to where we want to be.
That’s why I love this simple question from Ryder Carroll, author of The Bullet Journal Method:
“If you’re not happy with your life, then ask yourself, ‘What tiny thing could I do tomorrow that would make my life a little bit better?’”
Could you drink more water? Reach out to an old friend? Go for a run? Go to bed earlier? He suggests doing this every day for a month and tracking it to see how you feel and what’s changed after a few weeks.
The beauty of this approach is it isn’t overwhelming: you don’t have to solve your biggest problems right now, all you have to do is think of one tiny thing you could do tomorrow (and then go ahead and do it, of course!).
It also takes into account the fact that most of life’s burning issues and challenges don’t have one single answer that will make everything better. I can think of several situations and areas of life—changing money habits, relationship satisfaction, career trajectory—where I’ve spent a long time thinking there must be the one thing, the big solution I just haven’t found yet that will solve the problems I’m having in that area for good.
In reality, what has really made a difference has been taking tiny, consistent steps and doing a number of small things a little differently over days, weeks, months, and years. This approach is less glamorous, it takes effort, and requires patience, but these tiny steps have great cumulative power.
One tiny thing you do tomorrow might not feel like it’s making a big difference in the moment, but 10, 100, 1000 of these steps could change your life.
So: What tiny thing could you do tomorrow that would make your life a little bit better?
