A few steps

A car wash handed out loyalty cards, of two types. The first type of loyalty card had 8 holes to punch, and then the customer got a free car wash. The second type had 10 holes to punch, with the first 2 already punched out.

In each case, it took 8 car washes to get a free one. But the people who got the second type of card tended to fill it out and get the car wash more often.

Just the thought that they were already partway to the goal made them put more effort into actually getting there. It was a 100% psychological thing.

When we have a long-range goal, like getting in better shape, we often visualize the outcome and then ask what it will take to get there, and that immediately makes us think about the entire sum of the effort, which makes us feel overwhelmed or afraid.

But it helps if, instead, we think of ourselves as already partway along that path. Like, we’ve already put some of the progress behind us.

So with getting in shape, it would be, "well I already do X for exercise, and that’s good. Next time I'm doing it I'll just go a few more minutes."

So then we start thinking about how the effort is really a process, made up of small things, that we can build on top of other small things we already have. Like, "do X a little more", or "do Y instead of X every now and then". Not a gigantic life-change, not a commitment to a new way of being, but a decision to acknowledge where we are, in a journey that's already underway, and take a few steps in that direction a little more often.

Taking a few steps is not stressful or scary. It does not constitute a promise to take a thousand more. Did the last thousand steps we've already taken carry such a demand? No, they did not. These few steps do not either.

An interesting summation

"Information coming directly from a politician or his team without being vetted by reporters is little more than propaganda.

No American voter accepts one-sided accounts in their personal life. We wouldn't trust our teenager's perspective on a fender-bender. We wouldn't trust a single co-worker's description of a crucial meeting. We wouldn't even wholly trust our best friend's version of a nasty breakup. We look for holes in the story. We look for more information. We should demand the same in politics. And yet, so often, we do not. [...] Not when there is social media to fill the gap."

-- Katy Tur, "Unbelievable: My Front Row Seat To The Craziest Campaign In American History"