How to build powerful microhabits for your wellbeing – and keep them

Just a few moments of mindfulness can do wonders for your wellbeing

Zoonar GmbH / Alamy

Like many people, I have the intention of practising self-care. I know that meditating each day will help break me out of stressful thought spirals, but it has never become a part of my regular routine. With tight deadlines and family commitments, there just doesn’t seem to be the time.

A new book – Micropractice: a science-backed approach for calm, clarity and joy in 30 seconds or less by US psychologist Eli Susman – might just offer the solution to my problem. Drawing on a growing body of research, he argues that we can glean many of the benefits of mindfulness from extremely brief exercises, lasting just 30 seconds or less.

If you’re sceptical, I can understand why. I would have been, too, if I hadn’t previously written about some of Susman’s research for New Scientist. A few years ago, he investigated the benefits of a very short self-compassion meditation, which encouraged participants to “send kindness and warmth” to themselves “by bringing one hand to your belly and the other to your chest, with the energy of giving yourself a hug”. The aim, according to Susman and his colleagues, was for participants to treat themselves like they would treat a friend.

That was it – 20 seconds of deliberate effort to treat themselves kindly. They were then asked to practise it daily for a month. Those who followed the instructions showed considerably less stress, and better overall mental health at the follow-up compared with participants who had instead practised a short sequence of finger-tapping exercises in place of the meditation.

In his new book, Susman describes similarly optimistic results for many other lifestyle interventions. “Study after study pointed to the same overlooked pattern – one that almost no one talks about: It’s not how long you practice, but how often,” he writes. “Consistency, not duration, is what drives change. And yet, it’s rarely acknowledged.”

Consider “breathwork”, which typically revolves around slowing our inhalations and exhalations, has proven benefits for our mental health. The length of the interventions varies widely, but a large meta-analysis suggests that the duration is largely unimportant. “Although slow breathing exercises significantly reduced stress, depression, and anxiety, the size of the effects didn’t change based on how long participants practiced,” writes Susman. “Whether brief or extended, the benefits held steady, defying the typical ‘more is better’ wellness mantra.”

The same goes for stretching and yoga poses. Even a short period of bodily movement can bring enormous benefits for our mental state. As evidence, Susman points to a study of surgeons, who were asked to perform stretches for 90 seconds every 40 to 60 minutes of the working day. The minimal adjustment to their routine improved their mental focus and reduced the physical pain that normally accompanies their work.

Susman has many suggestions for the kinds of stretches you might attempt at your desk. In “seated cat-cow”, for example, you sit with both feet flat on the ground and your spine straight. As you inhale, you lift your head, draw your shoulders together and arch your back, while letting you belly soften and expand forward. On an exhale, you then allow your spine to round as your chin drops to your chest.

The sheer brevity of these exercises should make them easier to fit into our busy lives, but that is no guarantee that we will build them into our routine. Flossing our teeth, after all, takes only a couple of minutes, but many of us either forget or refuse to do it every day. For this reason, Susman has analysed the available literature on behavioural change to build a brief course on habit formation. His conclusions largely echo those of Charles Duhigg’s The Power of Habit and Katy Milkman’s How to Change – but they bear repeating.

The trick, he says, is to first find a cue that anchors the habit in a specific event. Ideally, the cue should be something conspicuous that occurs very regularly. As a coffee addict, I might practise the self-compassion meditation while I wait for my espresso to pour, for instance. I might decide to practise the seated cat-cow whenever I reach for my phone. And to relax before bed, I might choose to practice a few moments of slow breathing as soon as I’ve put my pyjamas on.

According to Susman, you should enhance the sense of reward by articulating why you want to change your behaviour in the first place and savouring those benefits afterwards. As you get started, you should also keep track of your progress, which can help to enhance your sense of accountability.

Most counterintuitively of all, Susman suggests allowing yourself two “emergency skip days” each week, during which you can cut yourself some slack if you fail to meet your goal. “When people give themselves permission to be human, they’re far more likely to keep going,” advises Susman. “Because what derails progress isn’t missing a day – it’s the shame spiral that follows.”

In a forthcoming study, Susman found that teaching these simple tips in a brief 15-minute video vastly increased the chances that someone would practise the self-compassion meditation over the following six months. And that, in turn, determined the size of the benefits for their mental health.

Susman’s argument is strong enough that I have started incorporating a few of these suggestions into my life, and I am already appreciating the moments of calm that they bring. I can only hope that this continues in my most hectic periods, too.

“At first, micropractices might just feel like something you do,” writes Susman. With time, however, “it stops feeling separate from your life and starts becoming the way you move through it”.

David Robson’s latest book is The Laws of Connection: 13 social strategies that will transform your life. If you have a question that you would like answered in his column, please send him a message at davidrobson.me/contact