Baby Steps: The 4-Day Win

Are you currently STUCK because something is just too hard?

You and everyone else!

In Z-Health, we say motivation is the choice between two outcomes. Most often, it seems to be the short-term outcome of sleeping in an extra hour or getting the dishes done versus the long-term outcome of lifelong health by going for a walk, getting to the gym, or even taking your vitamins.

I don’t know if it’s because it’s the beginning of the year, but there seems to be a plethora of Change books that just hit the bookshelves. Drive by Dan Pink and Switch by Dan and Chip Heath are two of the most popular, and I’ve just finished reading both. They are both well-written with lots of great nuggets. While both have differing analogies and approaches, at the end of the day, the message is the same: true change is hard, you need to take baby steps, and it works best when it’s something you truly, deeply care about (so the long-term outcome that is better for you becomes more important than the instant gratification).

Over the past year I’ve been experimenting with a change approach called the 4-Day Win. What I like about it, other than Martha Beck, the author of the book by the same name, being hysterically funny to read, is that it is a practical, step-by-step guide to change. Hers is a diet-based book, but the methodology is the same regardless of what change you are undertaking. What I also like about it is that it is based upon the Transtheoretical Model of Change that we use in Z-Health for understanding where someone is at in the change continuum.

The 4-Day Win process works like this:

Step 1: Pick a Goal

Start by identifying any goal you’d like to achieve.

Step 2: Play Halvsies Until Your Goal is Ridiculously Easy to Attain

This step is critical. If your thought process is, “sure, I can do that,” but in reality, you feel even the LEAST BIT squeamish about it, then it’s not small enough it. Ridiculously easy is the key here. Make it small enough so if you were to make it any smaller, you’d just feel foolish. THAT is what you goal needs to be (just for the next 4 days).

Step 3: Identify a Reward

This is your reward to yourself for each day you meet your ridiculously easy goal. I know this is an extrinsic reward, but sometimes that is what we need. Make the reward small, because you are going to do this every day. Maybe this means you get 10 minutes to surf your favorite pop/celeb site, put aside money for a manicure, or 30 minutes to read a good book. Make it small but meaningful.

Step 4: Identify a 4-Day Reward

This is a slightly larger reward for hitting your goal for 4 consecutive days. Maybe it’s a full hour of reading, get your manicure, maybe it’s just walking down to the coffee shop — completely alone. Again, the reward has to be what is important to you!

Step 5: Make Sure the Action and the Reward are Linked

What this means is that if you do the action, you HAVE to give yourself the reward. If you don’t do the action, you CAN’T give yourself the reward.

So, what do you do if you still aren’t able to take that action and make any headway on that goal? You know the answer. You continue to play halvsies until you nail it!

Once the initial 4-Day period is over, you are just that much closer to making your larger goal a reality. The next 4-Day period, make the goal slightly larger. It still needs to be ridiculously easy, but if your original goal was 5 minutes, maybe 7 minutes is doable now. Lather, rinse, repeat until you have met the original goal and it’s no longer a struggle to maintain.

You can then use the 4-Day win process to tackle the next challenge!

Tell me, what 4-Day Win are you going to tackle first?