How to Use Mini Habits to Start Running

For some people who maintain a regular running or exercise habit, the secret to their success was starting small. They didn’t dive headfirst into running, setting an ambitious goal like running a marathon. Rather, they began with a mini habit, a small, positive behavior that they did every day

Much research has been done and books written about the benefits of starting mini habits, also sometimes called tiny habits or micro-habits.

In his book, Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results, Stephen Guise explains how starting with a very small daily habit, such as one push-up a day, can lead to big results. How exactly? Once you start a mini-running habit, even if it’s running for a minute or two each day, you begin the habit formation process and work on strengthening your self-discipline and willpower.

As the habit takes hold and your willpower improves, you can build on that habit, adding more time to your runs.

Mini Habits Lead to Habit Formation

Establishing a running habit with the mini habits approach can help you avoid a pattern that may be familiar to you: Aim for a big goal, take a few steps toward it, lose willpower and momentum, quit, feel like a failure.

When people take on too many changes at once, they can overwhelm their limited supplies of willpower and discipline so, most often, they simply give up. “The result is not just that you failed to stick to your plan, but that you also likely fed your belief that it’s impossible to change lifelong habits,” write Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz in The Power of Full Engagement.

With a mini habit, the opposite scenario plays out. You’re consistently completing your goal, so you’ll feel positive and encouraged to keep going. You start to see progress, so you begin to believe that, yes, it’s possible to create a new, healthy habit.

When I first heard about the concept of mini habits, I was intrigued. Since I’ve been running for many years, I didn’t need to start a running mini habit, but there were plenty of other healthy habits or productivity improvements I wanted to implement.

I had been wanting to try meditation for a while, after hearing a lot about its benefits from books, articles, and friends. I always felt I didn’t have the time. But surely I could spend one minute a day meditating, right?

I started with meditating for one minute a day and after a couple of weeks moved up to 5 minutes. I began to notice that I was feeling more calm after meditating, and I started to crave that reward. The reward told my brain that meditating was a worthwhile habit I should continue. Now, a few years later, a 10-minute daily meditation is part of my everyday routine. And it all started with trying to meditate for just one minute.

Pick an Easy, Achievable Mini Habit

The key to making the mini habit approach work is to pick a goal that’s “too small to fail.” So commit to running for just five minutes every day. Just keep it very simple. And easy. You want to make your mini running habit so easy that it’s difficult to fail.

Each time you do your mini running habit, you’ll also be taking steps as part of your routine, such as changing into your running clothes, putting on your running shoes, and cueing up your running music. All of these steps will become cues that signal the start of your running routine.

By setting an easy, achievable starting point, you’ll always hit your target. You may even sometimes surpass it. And then you won’t have to deal with those feelings of inadequacy or guilt that kick in when you fail to hit an ambitious goal. Instead, the positive feeling of accomplishment will motivate you to keep going with your habit.

Track Your Mini Habit

Make sure you keep a visible record of your progress to keep you motivated. Mark on X on a calendar each day you run 5 minutes. Seeing all those X’s accumulating on the calendar will give you a visible reminder of your habit, as well as your progress, and motivate you to keep going.

Maintain Your Running Habit

Once you’ve been doing your mini habit for a few weeks, you can start implementing some other strategies to keep your running habit going. See the below articles for more advice.

About the author: Christine Luff is a certified RRCA running coach, and certified as a personal trainer, fitness nutrition specialist, and a weight management specialist by the American Council on Exercise. Her book, Run for Good: How to Create a Lifelong Running Habit, is available on Amazon.