The 1-minute Upgrade: My 2 New Favourite Micro Habits
Productivity and wellbeing aren’t always about overhauling your routine or setting up sophisticated spreadsheets. Sometimes the smallest habits create the biggest shifts in focus, enjoyment and intention.
As you may have already gathered from this blog, I love learning about and experimenting with all things productivity. We’ve discussed:
But, as I’ve found, productivity experts can have a knack for over-complicating productivity and wellbeing. Thanks to two big techers and a former doctor turned productivity icon, a couple of tiny ideas have completely changed how I experience my daily life. They take less than a minute to practise, so instead of trying to overhaul your life, try these tiny upgrades:
1. Define a Daily Highlight: Setting the Intention
I discovered the idea for identifying a daily highlight in the book Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky. They are both former Google staffers and among the masterminds behind services like Gmail and YouTube.
The authors, who understand our always-on world perhaps better than most, highlight the idea of a “busy bandwagon”, a societal pressure to always be busy. This is compounded by what they call “infinity pools”, the endlessly distracting and dopamine-inducing nature of our digital world.
It seems seasoned Silicon Valley professionals know how to distil an idea down to its core best - through the simple concept of identifying a daily ‘Highlight’. This isn’t about practising gratitude at the end of your day - it’s all about establishing intentionality up front.
Your daily Highlight is the space between your short-term tasks and your goals. It is the bright spot in your day. If someone were to ask you, ‘What was the highlight of your day?’, it answers that question before your day starts. While your daily Highlight isn’t the only thing you’ll do that day, it’s designed to set a priority, a focal point.
Your daily Highlight can be personal or professional, but it will likely fall into one of these categories:
Urgency
Satisfaction
Joy
The rule of thumb is to trust your gut and to choose a Highlight that takes 60-90 minutes - enough time to make it meaningful.
I’ve been practising defining a daily highlight for several months now. I write it on a Stickies post-it note on my MacBook, so it’s digitally pinned to my desktop all day. I do this either after I finish my Morning Pages journalling, or right before I begin work for the day.
It takes just under a minute, sometimes seconds, to set my intention and focus for the day. I’ve personally found it most rewarding to focus on the Joy and Satisfaction categories. I know the Urgent will get done anyway, but a Highlight that leans toward Satisfaction and Joy either keeps me present in a process - even a challenging one - or focused on the reward afterwards.
Setting a daily Highlight has been likely the tiniest daily micro-habit I’ve actively practised, yet it has completely visually and mentally reframed my entire day.
The authors say:
“Believe in your Highlight: It is worth prioritising over random disruption.”
2. Ask ‘What Would this Look Like if it Were Fun?’
I first heard mega creator, Ali Abdaal, mention this idea in a YouTube video, but recently learned more about it in his book Feel-Good Productivity. The former doctor turned YouTuber is renowned for making productivity as simple and enjoyable as possible.
Abdaal highlights that you can make doing hard things feel better if you pause to ask yourself, “What would this look like if it were fun?” first. This can change the way you deliver a project or can completely reframe a process.
Now before I do things that are more challenging or require deep focus, I ask myself how I can make the process more enjoyable. As a few ideas, this might be as simple as:
Picking a more inspiring spot to work
Enjoying your favourite tea, coffee or juice while you work
Dressing up for the occasion
Picking the perfect playlist for the task
Transforming your regular templates to be more inspiring
Abdaal says:
“What would this look like if it were fun?’ has now become a guiding question in my life. And it’s surprisingly easy to draw upon. Think of a task that you don’t want to do right now, and ask what it would look like if it were fun? Could you do it in a different way? Could you add music, or a sense of humour, or get creative? What if you set out to do the task with friends, or promised yourself a treat at the end of the process? Is there a way to make this draining process a little more enjoyable?”
Tiny Habits, Huge Impact
Your habits don’t need to be revolutionary. They don't always require a new planner or a complicated spreadsheet. Sometimes stopping to write something meaningful on a sticky note, or pausing to ask yourself an important question upfront, can change an experience before you begin it. Micro habits may seem insignificant in isolation, but when practised consistently, they have a way of quietly changing how we experience our days.
