Monica Packer

It's a starter, but it's also a net for you to fall back on.

If habits are helpers, that's one of the things they do.

They support us.

They lift us up.

They give us something to fall on to.

That's totally it.

And there's some cool science behind this.

I mean, do you just think about one of the laws of physics, laws of motion, a ball of motion stays in motion.

So even the baseline creates momentum that builds in that moment or in other ways.

Like you may be able to start the dishwasher and wipe off the counter.

And I've had clients who want to work on their big stacks of papers that they need to sort through.

Sometimes we can get the ideals easily.

Sometimes there are certain habits or areas of our life where it's just easy for us to meet the ideal.

OK, then if it's working for you, great.

Stick with it.

Like you don't have to have baselines for everything if things are working.

But if it's a particular habit, task, like routine responsibility that pops up for you and it's hard to maintain, this is where I would think about the baselines.

And this is where with the paper in particular, I've had clients who have a literal timer set for 10 minutes a day, just 10 minutes a day to go through it.

Or even sometimes it's a certain number of papers and that may seem like nothing, but I can't

Even begin to tell you the number of women who in doing this to having the courage to try something different have not only surprised themselves with how they've been able to form a habit that actually sticks and have been surprised about how it builds and how sustainable it is too.