Small Things Add Up

I’ve always been somewhat of an “all or nothing” kind of person. I’d rather fast for most of the day than count calories. I’d rather cut something out of my diet completely instead of cut back. If I decide I need to exercise more, I go for a two mile hike after not going on walks for months. When I discover a new intriguing hobby, I spend three months doing a deep dive into anything and everything about it.

You get the picture. I tend to have an “all in” or “all out” mindset. It makes it difficult to actually move the needle on anything, because let’s be honest; that’s not a sustainable way to live, generally.

Sure, there’s an argument to be said that fasting most of the day and eating in a smaller window is how we biologically handle processing food better. And the initial “honeymoon” period with hobbies, relationships, or anything else good in life is what creates a foundation for a more reasonable approach later on (it cements it as a thing worth holding on to when things get challenging).

But my tendency toward extremes can play out in a way that forces me to acknowledge that I often stop myself before I even begin, simply because I don’t feel like I have the time, energy, or focus take something on “in full.”

Something that I’ve been ruminating on lately is the power of small, consistent steps. It’s a thing I’m learning more and more about, and it seems to be the not-so-secret answer to a more fulfilling life. At least for me.

Small changes can make a big difference, and the best part is that small changes are easier to do and therefore easier to keep doing. The change is constant. The needle doesn’t move much every day, but it does move every day.

This isn’t a new concept. But it’s newly realized in my consciousness.

I notice this most in habit forming, but I’ve also come to realize the power of small projects being finished. It clears up my mind. It brings joy to my life.

For instance, the short hallway just inside of our back door is in a temporary state. Eventually, I’ll be knocking out a wall and building a storage nook. For now, it’s missing trim, has temporary flooring, and the old gross yellow paint the previous house owner used.

And there is nowhere to put my keys.

This may seem like a trivial thing, but for me, if something doesn’t have a home, it just moves around constantly and I can’t remember where I left it. It also creates clutter, something I’m trying hard to cut down in my life.

So I did what anyone might do in such a situation: I put up some command hooks. Perfect! Temporary, and ugly, but functional.

That is, until the command hooks fell down. The texture of the wall and the temperature and humidity change (being right next to an old leaky door) pretty much meant that 75% of my command hooks didn’t stand a chance. And then there was one. A single hook for my keys, and sunglasses, and any other sets of keys around the house from my wife or friends/family staying with us.

So every day, I was just waiting for it to fall down like the others. And I was constantly shuffling between my keys or sunglasses on top, or one or the other falling off because the hook was overloaded.

It’s basically a Greek tragedy.

It sounds trivial, but it weighed on me. It was an everyday occurrence of negativity. And yet the full project of renovating the hallway and creating the storage closet is such a large behemoth in my mind, I can’t bring myself to wait until that’s finished just to get a place for my keys.

So I decided to make a small key hook mount, and screw it into the wall.

Once again, my desire to hoard all things came in handy. All of this (except the mounting hardware on the back) was built with scrap wood and random hardware in my garage

And of course, once I started I couldn’t help myself. I made it out of hardwood. I chamfered the corners with a hand plane. I sanded it down. I decided I wanted to hang it without any visible screws and had to track down keyhole hardware and chisel out grooves in the back for mounting.

It took maybe 4 hours total, which was longer than I planned. And it’s not quite “quality” - it’s a Frankenstein’s monster of “look nice” and “hacked together.”

But every day since, every time I’ve used it, I get a small surge of satisfaction. It’s ridiculous, really. Maybe that feeling comes from making something useful with my hands (in fact, I’m sure that’s part of it). Maybe it’s just that I don’t have to hunt for my keys or sunglasses anymore.

Either way, it’s a small thing. A tiny positive change to my quality of life. But the return on investment, so to speak, has been ten fold. It’s one less thing to cause friction in my life.

I feel the same way about the two minutes of exercise I’ve added to my daily morning routine. Or the two minutes of Spanish education I’ve started doing. It’s very small, almost absurdly so…but the consistency makes me feel like progress is happening.

So I’m starting to see small improvements as gigantic leaps of progress. I plan to look for more “easy wins” in my daily life, and celebrate them.

Who knows - this time next year I might be quite surprised by how many things are markedly improved in my life.