DanaWritesCode

Minimum Viable Progress

There's a good chance you've heard of Minimum Viable Product - the concept of building a product just to the point where you can collect feedback from early users, to then continue iterating. I've been employing something else that's helped me a lot when it comes to working on personal goals and habit building, and I wanted to share that here.

I often feel overwhelmed when thinking about all that needs to be done to make a project successful. Other times, I feel a lot of inertia around small things that seem annoying or inconvenient - say, flossing for example. I often envy people who seem to be able to simply apply themselves to a problem or task, who can stay focused through the ebbs and flows of a project. I also often wish to have better habits that I admire in others. To improve on all these things, I've started using what I now would like to dub as "Minimum Viable Progress".

What is Minimum Viable Progress?

Minimum Viable Progress is a pretty loose term that covers whatever unit of time or work would move you just enough forward in your pursuits. There are many ways to define it depending on the goal. Here are a few examples that have worked for me:

1. Flossing - I was traveling for a bit and fell off the bandwagon of flossing. I wanted to get back to my habit but I was really dreading it. Logically, I knew it's a super quick task that would go a long way in keeping my teeth clean and healthy as well as maintaining my good standing with my dentist. However I was just dragging my feet. So after a week or so of putting it off each night, thinking "Tomorrow I'll definitely floss", I decided to make it ridiculously easy to work towards starting my habit. Each night for a few nights, I would do the absolute bare minimum to move me towards flossing. You see, I use these flossing sticks with a removable head - each time you floss you replace the top with a new little flossing head with a string. On the first night, I simply took out a new box of the flossing heads and placed it on my bathroom counter. The next night, I opened the box. On the third night, I attached a new flossing head. Finally, on the fourth night, I actually flossed. After this, I would floss every night before going to bed. Now, this might sound absolutely silly and/or mental, but it worked - it got me flossing again. MVProgress: smallest step to set up my flosser again.
2. Reading - I go through periods where I read quite a bit and then big lulls. Last year, I made the mistake of buying a whole bunch of books I thought I "should" read. I ended up starting a lot of them and then losing momentum. I'd end up with a pile of books on my nightstand, which I would gaze at with guilt each night before bed and then look away and mindlessly scroll my phone for 30 minutes. I felt like I couldn't start or buy any other books before I finished some of the ones I started, but I also didn't feel a great pull to finish the books I had sitting there. Finally, over the holidays I was gifted a science fiction novel by my brother in law. I really enjoy science fiction and also wanted to be able to talk about this book with my brother in law. I decided I would set a goal of reading one page every day. One page is nothing - most people can read a page in maybe a few minutes. The point was to make this a laughably easy goal that I could definitely do. It also meant that often, even though I was tired or not in the mood to read, I would think "well I can definitely do one page", and then once I started reading I would get into the book and want to keep reading. This small goal helped me go on to finish a couple of books and made me excited about reading again. MVProgress: 1 page of a book a day.
3. This blog - The last month or two I started thinking about starting a new technical project. I had my old blog but it was so outdated - I had built it out, posted one blog, and then a few months later COVID hit and a lot of my good intentions went out the window. It had sat there stale for about 4 years. I felt like I wanted something new, with a new design and a cooler name. I had also not programmed since July, when I went on maternity leave. Starting a new blog felt like this huge thing. What would it look like? What would I write about? So I decided to just start and try to spend at least 5-10 minutes working on either the site itself or writing a blog every day. This has made the whole thing seem way less daunting - simply chipping away at it slowly rather than needing to finish a huge to do list. I've also realized that a blog post doesn't have to be a huge thing - it could be something small that I learned that day or one line of code or configuration that might save someone else some time debugging. The most important thing is just continuing to make progress, big or small. MVProgress: 5-10 minutes working on the blog.

So the next time I start to feel overwhelmed, or think about starting a new habit, I'm going to think about how I might be able to apply Minimum Viable Progress to achieve my goal. Is this something you might be able to use in your life?