Minimum Viable Day

17 Jun 2020

I have a habit of overcommitting.

With the best intentions, I set lofty personal and professional goals.

For a while, everything is great. I’m hitting my marks, doing everything on my list.

Then, something happens.

I miss a workout, or sleep in too late, or spend a Saturday locked to the couch playing a video game.

After a temporary setback, everything falls apart.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve gone through this exact cycle.

Here’s what I’m telling myself in an effort to short-circuit it:

Lower your expectations.

It’s not what any of us want to hear. We want to be superheroes, reading two books every week while also exercising every day and never eating a calorie over our allotted amount.

It’s important to me to have big goals. If someone is doing what I want to do, then it’s clearly possible. Having aspirations keeps me looking forward, it gets me off the couch.

The reality is that we can’t do it all in a day, or in a week. So, my suggestion:

Establish a Minimum Viable Day.

Take a notecard and write down a set of things which, if achieved in a day, would provide you some satisfaction.

Once you’ve got this list, cut it down to five or so. We can only hold so many things in our mind.

If you have some time-based things, like exercise for an hour, cut the time in half.

If you look at this list and it feels insignificant, that’s exactly the point.

Once you’re crushing your base MVD with consistency, move the goalposts. Not too much at once.

Here’s my list: