This is not about doing a large number of small steps to achieve something big. This is about getting used to change. When looking at my real behavior compared to my intended behavior, I often realize that while I had made a rational decision to improve something, I rather often did not go through with it. This may be understandable for changes that require a lot of effort, but many of them could be easily achieved, so it looks more like I am boycotting myself.
Quite often the reason for this seems to be the risk of losing control. You may want to start to paint, but what if you have no talent for this at all? You may want to go out and make new friends, but what if you get rejected? You may want to eat healthy, but what if you don’t like the taste? You may become healthier, but enjoy life less. What if you change your job to something better payed, but you cannot handle the increased responsibility?
It is very hard to argue yourself out of these subconscious fears. There is always a reason to stay wherever you are right now: at least you know how to handle it. Every change brings not only the option of improvement, but also the danger of failure.
I know this and I can see this pattern in many of my failed attempts to improve things. But from years of experience I also know that having realized this pattern exists does not mean I can avoid it at all. So the strategy is to desensitize myself. Defuse the fear that giving up the current stable situation might make things worse.
Changing (at least) one thing every day should be easy in the beginning. There are usually a number of small changes that can be easily made and that do not endanger one’s life in any way (move the table, throw out old stuff, whatever). But I guess that after 50 days or so it will become quite a challenge to invent something new to change (unless you cheat and enter a undo/redo cycle or accept things like routine tasks as change everytime you perform them). The changes will have to become weirder or more dangerous. I hope that at one point the challenge to find something to change will outweigh some of the fear implied with the change and that I will do things I wouldn’t dare today simply because that way I can comply with my “change one thing every day” rule. And if this happens often enough, the expected shortfall of negative feedback will hopefully change my attitude towards change itself.
