Recently, Yifu Guo and Alec Liu both independently recommended I read the book “The Power of Habit”. I’d been telling them how I’ve developed poor habits over the past few years.
The book contains a fascinating story about how a woman made a simple decision to stop smoking.. And how that triggered a chain reaction of changes in her life which was utterly transformational in every way within 12 months. All because of her decision to stop smoking.
I noticed a small example of this myself last week. My kitchen for the past few years has always been a total mess.
For some reason I decided to order some new scrub sponges. Then something miraculous happened.
My kitchen has gone from being a total mess to perfectly clean. See, I LOVE a clean kitchen. And before I never had very good scrub sponges. So I didn’t clean it properly and basically abandoned it. Now it is perfect. I have no idea why I didn’t have good sponges before. I never thought about it.
But this may have downstream consequences. I have had my housekeeper come weekly, in large part for cleaning my kitchen and making it useable. I also time my groceries delivery for when she comes so she can do some cooking as well.
But if the kitchen is spotlessly clean, that significantly reduces the need for her to come every week. And, I have a great vacuum sealer so I could go back to ordering food every 2 weeks instead of weekly, using the freezer + sealed pre-cooked food. It takes some effort to deal with groceries + cleaning every week, so doing this every 2 weeks would be a great time saver.
All these possibilities have opened up due to $15 in sponges.
Now, I know you don’t care about my kitchen. But its fascinating to me to notice the unexpected downstream effects one small change can have.
What small changes could you try? What is some little thing you don’t really care about but could make a bit better just to see what happens?
UPDATE: Its now August 8, about 45 days later. This has been utterly transformational for me. I’ve fully reorganized my kitchen and have been learning to cook. My housekeeper now only comes every 2 weeks, and I order food every 2 weeks, using the freezer extensively. The sponges was the trigger for all of this clicking into place!