Are you looking to make small changes with big impact in your editing business? In this episode, we’re talking about how editors can create habits that make their businesses better with the Tiny Habits® Method. This isn’t about creating tons of to-do lists and optimizing every second of your life—it’s about forming achievable habits you look forward to completing because they help your business run smoother and make you feel good. Listen in as I share how I figured out I needed to start small with basically everything in my life, including habits. We’re also going to talk about the concept of habits and the habit-forming method that works best for me. As always, take what works for you from this episode and leave or tweak the rest.
Are you looking to make small changes with big impact in your editing business? In this episode, we’re talking about how editors can create habits that make their businesses better with the Tiny Habits® Method. This isn’t about creating tons of to-do lists and optimizing every second of your life—it’s about forming achievable habits you look forward to completing because they help your business run smoother and make you feel good.
Listen in as I share how I figured out I needed to start small with basically everything in my life, including habits. We’re also going to talk about the concept of habits and the habit-forming method that works best for me. As always, take what works for you from this episode and leave or tweak the rest.
Welcome to The Modern Editor Podcast, where we talk about all things editing and what it's like to run an editorial business in today's world. I'm your host, Tara Whitaker. Let's get to it.
Hello, editor friends. Welcome to today's episode. We're going to be talking about why creating habits for editors can help our businesses.
Now we're not talking about habitizing our lives to the point where we're literally checking off 500 things on a habit tracker every day. Been there, done that. Didn't work very well for me. We're going to be talking about incorporating habits into our day that we actually want to do, that are achievable, and that make us feel good.
Which I know might sound like a wild concept. So stay tuned. We're going to talk about how I figured out how I needed to start small with basically everything in my life, including habits. And then we're going to talk about the concept of habits and the method that I now use that I have found works best for me. Now, as always with this podcast, take what works for you and leave or tweak the rest.
All right, so let's jump right into it. Now, if you've listened to previous episodes of The Modern Editor Podcast, this is going to sound a little familiar at first, but if it's your first time tuning in, know that I am a big fan of small changes equaling big results.
I say it often. I say it on the podcast. I say it on social media. I say it in the Freelance Editors Club. I say it all the time, maybe too often. But it's basically my life motto at this point. I'm at the point where I can't accomplish anything unless I break it down into small chunks. It doesn't matter what the project is, what the goal is, whatever it is, it has to be broken down.
And there's a lot of science as to why this works best, but just personally, it's simply the only way I can get anything done. I have two small kids, I have a husband, a house, a business, I volunteer, etc. I very rarely have huge chunks of time to be able to accomplish something in one fell swoop. And that used to be how I did things.
I had, you know, something on my plate and I tend to procrastinate a little bit, so I would do it all at once, whatever the case may be. And I was able to do that because I didn't have a lot of outside responsibilities. And that's how I've really gotten things done most of my life until, I'm going to say, kids.
That probably was my turning point. And I had to figure out a way to still get things done that wasn't in big chunks of time, because I kept waiting for those perfect conditions, that perfect chunk of time, that entire weekend, that entire week. But guess what? That no longer exists. And I know it doesn't exist for me and it might not exist for you either.
And the other thing was that I found that there was a lot of shame around not being able to make these big sweeping changes to your life or accomplishing a big goal or a project. You should wake up earlier. I know we've all seen those videos of these people that are like, I wake up at two o'clock and I do a three-hour meditation, and then I drink my green smoothie, and then I go in my mind palace for an hour and ugh, talk about eye roll.
That doesn't work for me. If you tell me to just suck it up or I'm not working hard enough or I'm not waking up early enough, that's a no. An immediate no. There's a small part of me, depending on what it is, that might do something out of spite, just because I'm petty like that, and if you tell me I can't do something, my brain is like, watch me.
However, that is not consistent enough to depend on, nor do I want to accomplish goals with a foundation of spite, so that doesn't work for me. So if you're not into the shame game either, this podcast is for you, for sure.
And I know that at this point in my life, or any point in my life, but I just realized it, I have to feel good about what I'm doing, even if it's super small and might seem insignificant. No, I'm not saying like, everything that I do has to be sunshine and rainbows. That's not the case, but if we're talking about incorporating habits into our lives, it has to be something that brings us some joy or else we're not going to do it.
And I'll get back into that a little bit later. I have been doing this whole concept of small changes or small actions for a while, I'll just say since my daughter was born, so we'll say seven years ago, at least. But the timeline is a little vague here, but I'm going do my best to guess.
I think it was around 2020, and we all know what happened in 2020, that I discovered BJ Fogg and the Tiny Habits® Method. I'm sure I was online, scrolling, or who knows what I was doing, but I came across the Tiny Habits book. And I had no idea that there was an actual method out there that existed that focused on doing things tiny.
Because everything I see out there was the whole “go big or go home” mentality. And I admit, I totally use that phrase. But, it's that whole concept of if you have a week, get it all done at once, that's the way to do it. I never had seen anything about doing things tiny. I grabbed the book ASAP as I do whenever I find something new and that I like.
I think I grabbed it in 2020, because I have an old cover, and the newer cover I think was launched in 2021. We're just going to use those dates. It's been at least four years that I've been using the Tiny Habits® Method specifically, in addition to the things that I was just doing on my own of doing things small and making big changes through those small actions.
But in the summer of 2024, I do know that date for sure, I wanted to take my training and my education to the next level and become a Tiny Habits® Certified Coach. Because by that point I had clearly known the power of the method. I had been doing it for three or four years. And I really wanted to help other people, editors and entrepreneurs specifically, in helping them create habits that would make a big impact.
The book is super thorough and so beneficial, but I knew I needed to learn more. So I went through a very intensive training. I think it took three, two or three months, now I can't remember. It was thorough, I can assure you that. But I learned so much about behavior and habits. Too much to go through in one single episode, but what I will do is I'm going to highlight two things here that will allow you to take some action after the episode if you choose.
So the first one is the Tiny Habits® Recipe. And what this is is basically the sentence that you will create that tells the habit that you're going to start doing. ABC is an easy way to remember. A for anchor, B for behavior, and C for celebration.
So what that looks like is “After I blank, I will blank, then I will celebrate by blank.” Now the book has tons of examples, both for anchors and behaviors, and also ways to celebrate that you can mix and match to create your own recipes. And of course you don't have to use any in the book. You can come up with ones yourself. But for this episode, I wanted to show you three that I came up with that editors like ourselves might find beneficial.
So one of them is for movement. Again, do this, tweak this as you need. But the example here is “After I finish editing a chapter, I will stand up and stretch my legs. Then I'll celebrate by saying, ‘Nailed it!’” Now, those things might not apply to you. After I finish editing a chapter, maybe you're not editing a book. Maybe you're editing a blog post or something. Of course, you can tweak it. But notice when I said, “I will stand up and stretch my legs.” I didn't say, “I'm going to stand up and stretch my entire body. I'm not going to go run a mile.” I'm going to stretch my legs. Small, simple, easily doable.
If you really wanted to get specific, you can only stretch one leg. But for the purposes of this, I just threw both in. And then the celebrate saying, “Nailed it?” That's just funny. I say that to myself when I do something good. I just like that phrase. If that doesn't work for you, you can come up with something else.
But let me say it one more time so you get the recipe. “After I finish editing a chapter, I will stand up and stretch my legs. And I will celebrate by saying, ‘Nailed it!’”
All right, next example I came up with is, “After I turn off my computer, I will take one deep breath, and I'll celebrate by doing a little shimmy.” I'm calling myself out here, as I often do. I never turn off my computer. Does anybody else turn off their computer every day? Mine is on 24/7, 365, which I don't think is good for it. I think I probably need to incorporate this.
But my thought was that you would turn off your computer at the end of your workday. Now, for some of us, that might just be, you know, whatever time it is, but for me, I want to turn off my computer because then I transition into mom mode and I want to put the work behind me and focus on family ahead of time.
So turning off my computer and taking that one deep breath gives me that reset to be like, okay, Business Owner Tara has rocked it out today. Mom Tara now needs to take over. Notice I said “one deep breath.” Not five, not ten, not a twenty-minute meditation, just one deep breath. And you can do more if you want, like there's no limit to this, but at the minimum you're going to take one deep breath. Because if you do one breath, that means you have succeeded.
And doing a little shimmy, that might resonate with you. It might not. You can say something. You can give yourself a high five. You can clap your own hand. Whatever the case may be.
All right. And the last one is for focus. And I'm calling myself out again here too. “After I read my email, I will close my email tab. And I'll celebrate with a visualization.” I have four email inboxes and all four tabs are always open. And it's such an issue with my focus. So I need to do this. But the visualization is a cool way to celebrate if that's something that, again, resonates with you.
Sometimes we get so bogged down in the day to day. And this is also coming from reading Rest is Resistance in the FEC book club a couple of months ago. But we don't take the time to daydream or just to sit and give ourselves time to have creative thoughts. I put this in here because I think it's a cool way of just giving ourselves a little beat and a way to celebrate.
For me, I would imagine myself on a beach. I'm in the Midwest. It's like that period of time where it's getting warm and the snow is all black and disgusting and it's dreary. And just, we are in the throes of poopy winter, but on the cusp of spring, where everything's just ugly. So I want to imagine myself on a beach reading a book, with the sun warming my face, and I'll probably have a mojito in my hand. So giving myself that minute to think about that really helps.
Now you visualize whatever you want, whatever sounds good to you, but give yourself that space to daydream and to think and to just allow yourself to be someplace else for a hot second, and then you can move on with your day. And you can do this anytime, not just when you're finishing a habit, all right?
So those are just a few examples. Try some out, experiment. A lot of this is experimentation, too. You might come up with a recipe and you're like, Nope, that's not working. Tweak it. We're doing this from a place of curiosity and experimentation. It's not a judgment thing. It's not a shame thing. We're just trying new things, okay?
Now, the second thing I wanted to talk about in this episode is the mic drop, and it was the mic drop for me. It is that emotions create habits. And I'm gonna say it again. Emotions create habits. Not some magical thirty-day time frame. Not how many days in a row we do it. Not any sort of frequency. It is our emotions.
And when I learned this, it was big for me and it might be for you too, but it all clicked when both I read that part in the book and we talked about it in my training, because if you really think about it, sometimes when we try to incorporate a habit into our routine, it's something that we don't even want to do. We feel like we should or we have to. That is a recipe for disaster.
We don't do things we don't want to do. It might last a little bit, but it's not sustainable. It doesn't create lasting change and it doesn't bring us joy. So the Tiny Habits® Method is all about helping people do the things that they want to do, to succeed at the things they want to do.
And this is why celebration being a part of it is so key. And if you're thinking, I don't know how to celebrate, it feels awkward, same. I was in that same boat. But it is a skill we have to learn. Some of us have to learn. And that does seem a little odd, but it's true.
We know how to celebrate other people, right? We can throw big parties. We can go on lavish vacations. If that's how you want to celebrate, great. But what I'm talking about here is loving ourselves enough to celebrate an accomplishment, no matter how big or small, in a way that resonates with us.
That is the whole key to building lasting habits. And that was just a revelation for me. So maybe it is for you too, or maybe you're like, Yeah, I already knew that. If so, you're way ahead of the game than I am. But keep that in mind. Emotions create habits. The thirty-day thing has been debunked. We can talk about that on a separate episode or offline. There's no magic number. It's emotions.
If you've picked up on what I'm putting down here, you can tell how much Tiny Habits® has changed my life. I know that sounds so dramatic and cliche, but it's how I get anything done or incorporated in my life now.
I've successfully incorporated more movement, more deep breathing, and probably most importantly, more positive self-talk into my daily life. And those might seem small or insignificant, but I can assure you they are not. They've made such a big impact on my nervous system, which is something I am constantly trying to calm down, and how I go about my day.
The positive self-talk I know for a fact every single one of us can be better at. I know. We are great at hyping up our friends and our family and our colleagues. And when it comes to us, we do something and we're like, Whoopie, big deal. That wasn't even, that was so insignificant. Nope. Nope. This method is going to teach you how to incorporate more positive self-talk, and I promise you it will leak into every facet of your life in a positive way.
So I'm going to leave you with this as a reminder. Tiny is powerful. Tiny can make a big impact. And tiny is better than nothing. It is forward momentum, which is what counts.
All right, there you have it. I hope you're thinking about some Tiny Habit® Recipes to incorporate in your life. Think about how you can do things in a small way, not a big, ginormous go-all-out way. If you can do things like that, great, but if you're like me and need something drilled down into its smallest components, this is the method for you.
And habits can get bigger over time, right? You can start with taking one deep breath, but you can increase that to two breaths, and then maybe three, and then four, and to whatever is comfortable for you. But the thing I want you to remember is to start small.
Now, I already mentioned the Tiny Habits book by BJ Fogg. I highly recommend grabbing a copy, either buying a copy or getting it from your local library. I'll put a link to bookshop.org in the show notes if you want to buy it because you might want to mark it up like I did. But in May, inside the Freelance Editors Club, we're also going to be reading this for book club and diving deep into all the things it talks about, which is like I said, we could go on for hours and hours talking about all of the amazing things that go into the method.
That's going to be in May. So if you want to join us. You can sign up for a free 14-day trial. You can go to TaraWhitaker.com/club to get started. I also offer one-on-one coaching for Tiny Habits®. If you are interested in that, just shoot me an email at Hello@TaraWhitaker.com.
And otherwise, until next time, keep learning, keep growing and remember to start small.
Thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode. If you enjoy The Modern Editor Podcast, I would be so grateful if you left us a review over on iTunes. And as always, you can head to TaraWhitaker.com to connect with me and stay in touch. We'll chat again soon.