Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results by Stephen GuiseMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
What kind of book is this?
This is an expository work; more specifically, a practical self-help book.
Rational & Why I read this book
2022 I will work on a lot of my habits. I picked this short book as a preparation for my yearly planning session.
The unity of the book — what is the book about as a whole?
This book introduces and guides you step-by-step through the process of creating and cultivating "mini habits" in your life; that is, habits that are so small that they are so stupidly easy that there is no reason not to do them. An example would be to do 2 push-ups after going to the toilet.
The book's structure
The book has 8 chapters across 120 pages:
1. Introduction to Mini Habits
2. How Your Brain Works
3. Motivation Vs. Willpower
4. The strategy of Mini Habits
5. The Mini Habits Difference
6. Mini Habits — Eight Small Steps to Big Change
7. Eight Mini Habit Rules
8. Final Words
One particular lesson
Though a very short read, I highlighted a lot. One idea, totally new to me, was what the author calls freedom-based, non-specific habit cues: if you not only target one specific cue for a habit but instead multiple ones, you end up with a much more flexible and sustainable habit. Caveat: this is only possible if you start with very tiny habits.
Judgement & Recommendations - Who should read this?
My recommendations are largely based on whether I think how many people could benefit from reading a given book. I consider the content, the style, and a "value-per-pages". To my surprise, I found this short and highly practical book to be a very worthwhile my time; even for people who don't read that much I think I generally would recommend this since it is concise, approachable, contains a lot of practical advice, and is not too long in total. That is why I recommend you give this a try. Unlike the two big books on the topic of "small habits"— Tiny Habits: The Small Changes That Change Everything and Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones — Mini Habits is the only one that focuses on the "mini" throughout the whole book. If you were only to read one of these three books, you should pick BG Foggs Tiny Habits, as BG Fogg is the only "true" expert on the subject matter. Otherwise, read all three of them and build your own opinion and pick what of it works for you. I rate Mini Habits a 7 out of 10 (⭑⭑⭑⭑) on my personal rating scale, which means: "Good read, despite minor weaknesses; generally recommended.".
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