Why one big change is easier to implement than many small ones...

Finally, I’m back from vacation. Not only I’m well rested now but I’m full with fresh wake up ideas. The idea I have to share today has emerged soon after vacation was over, and it was time to get back on my early wake up schedule, which I temporarily gave up on. I had 3 hours difference between my vacation wake up time and my "normal" early wake up time. I wrote before about building early wake up habit slowly, but this time I’ve decided that I don’t have weeks of time to get my habit back. I’ve decided to go hardcore way and changed my sleeping pattern in one day. Gosh, it was tough… but only for few moments. Just few minutes later, I felt terrific!

The key was going for a one big change instead of going for many small changes. It may sound odd, but quite often one big change is much easier to implement than many small ones. Why? There are two primary reasons:

• You feel result better. You can clearly see the difference before the change and after change happens.
• You get result faster. Getting quick result is very motivating, and it will help you keep going. You save time, too.

Another benefit of going for one big change is that literally you have fewer chances to fail. It’s too easy to resist a small change, and out of many small changes you’ll surely fail some. With one big change, it’s either yes or no. And if it’s yes, you are the winner!

The idea of making one big change has worked well for me for one more reason. It clearly separated vacation time from work time for me. It was mental "back to work" order. I would surely have hard time getting back into a working mode should I try to do it gradually.

I did use several tips from my collection to make this one big change happen, and make sure I don’t fail. Going for big change does not mean you do not have to carefully plan for it. You have to do all "home work" which often involves going trough gradual preparation steps. That’s why it worked for me. But overall idea of drastic change has worked just as well. Life is too short for making small steps. Life is too short for being insignificant. Go for big changes!

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