This is what Nike meant when it said, “Just do it!”
Ever come across the word “Decisive moments”? well, this is what your favourite brand means when it says “Just do it!” and they are teaching you a productivity hack. I’ll explain.
It’s pretty easy to understand and when adhered to can maximize one’s productivity daily. Decisive moments are all around us guys. They’re like pathways to the great things we want to do but probably never do because of the big enemies — “Procrastination” and “laziness”. It’s a battle getting rid of these two, to be honest. A daily battle.
A major decisive moment we all have as individuals, and even collectively is getting out of bed. Think about it, if you never get out of bed, you’d miss all your classes as a student, you’d miss your exams, you’d miss tests and ultimately have poor grades. Getting out of bed seems like a detail too tiny to influence my grades in school or how productive or successful one can be, and that is because it has become automatic. You know you have to get out of bed to take the next course of action to have a productive day. This is why several prominent figures tend to talk about what time they get out of bed.
It’s also the same with the short-term goals we set out to achieve daily. There are decisive moments we ignore because they seem so insignificant, but once these decisive moments are acted upon, you’d most likely complete that task you’ve been procrastinating for days.
The idea is to make the task as easy as possible in your head. I’ll give an example, If I set out to run every morning, what’s the first thing I need to do? I need to put on my running shoes. That’s a decisive moment. The next thing to do is walk out of the house and I’m halfway done. The truth is if I never put on my running shoes, ill most likely procrastinate on when to run and probably never run, eventually. But once I decide to put on my running shoes, I have taken the first step and I have no choice but to go out and take that run. It doesn’t matter if I run for 5 mins or 1hr, what matters is I took a step that left me with no choice but to take the next step.
If I set out to do 30 pushups daily, a pathway to achieving this is to do at least 1 push up so the decisive moment here is that moment I decide to do 1 pushup, from there I can keep counting till I hit 30 or get tired because the truth is 1 pushup a day is a whole lot better than not exercising at all.
This also applies to certain tasks we set out to do for the day. A lot of the times we want to do the big things and so we write the big things down in our to-do list. But you see, to achieve the big things, it is important to break the big things down and pay attention to the pathway or decisive moment; that moment that once acted upon you would be left with no choice but to complete the task or do it halfway. The reason is, our brains are wired to enjoy comfort and ease. No man loves stress or loves to work hard, Pay me a million dollars every month and I will have people do all the work for me while I find something fun to do.
So, make it easy for your brain to comprehend and your body can follow suit to complete the task. Simplify every model in such a way that once you take the first step, you’d look stupid if you undid that step and trust me, no one likes to look stupid.
This is the 3rd rule of atomic habits; Make it easy.
The long and short of what I’m trying to pass across in this article is, we procrastinate or find certain tasks difficult to do once and for all (myself inclusive) because we pay attention to the big picture and never really pay attention to the tiny details, the pathways that help us on jump on the task.
Find that decisive moment, act on it, stay there for just 2 minutes and you’ll most likely find yourself in deep focus.
“Make it easy to start and the rest will follow” — James Clear.
