I complained to my friend that I was a slow cyclist. I had recently ridden in a 3000-person biking event where, it seemed, nearly everyone passed me at some point.
He surveyed my bike. “I think you need to raise your seat a little,” the friend said.
I followed his suggestion. The “little” tweak transformed my biking world.
I felt more extension in my legs. I was able to pedal with more efficiency and could even see things better from a slightly higher position.
The notion of “small changes lead to larger changes” was a gem that I learned years ago in my teaching. I still marvel at the meaningful simplicity of this idea.
Bill O’Hanlon focused on this specific premise in his 1999 book, Do One Thing Different. “Whenever you are stuck with a problem, try something new. Do something—just one thing—different. Break the pattern of the problem,” he wrote.
The idea still sticks with O’Hanlon. “It’s easier to make small changes than big ones,” he told me via email. “Easier to initially make them and then to make adjustments if they don’t work or if you want to make even bigger ones that follow the initial small change.”
Willpower and motivation aside in making behavior changes, the idea is to merely start small.
After all, our willpower is limited, a point to remember according to Ezekiel Emanuel in Eat your Ice Cream. “Do what you can, remembering that…small, habitual changes, especially ones you enjoy, make the longest-lasting impacts,” he wrote.
An estimated 43 percent of a day belongs to habits, often done when our minds are elsewhere, according to Wendy Wood. She cited research in her 2019 book that nearly 90 percent of daily hygiene, such as showering and dressing, was due to habits, and 55 percent of work-oriented tasks was done habitually.
If desiring a new habit, the key ingredient is reward. “All we have to do is repeat something and get rewarded for it, and we’re learning a habit,” she said in one interview.
The rewarding component is brain-related. When rewarded, the brain’s release of dopamine connects the context of the behavior and positive response. “That’s one of the reasons why rewards are so important and so useful for forming habits,” she said.
Small adjustments done concurrently may have surprising outcomes. Koemel et al. (2025) found that combining about five minutes of sleep, two minutes of moderate/vigorous exercise, and the equivalent of a half-serving of vegetables or whole grains to daily routines was related to an additional year of lifespan.
The authors noted that “a potential synergy” may exist across the sleep, physical activity, and nutrition behaviors, suggesting that small modifications in them “may offer a powerful and feasible public health opportunity for improving lifespan for at least a year…”
Those adjustments may just have a ripple effect, as O’Hanlon pointed out. “Changes in behavior can lead to changes in feelings, sensations, perceptions and physiology,” he said. “Everything is connected and each of our systems can affect one another.”
Making those seemingly minor positive changes in health might be surprisingly significant, at which point they may become second nature.
It’s akin to learning how to ride a bike: You’ll always know how to do it. Just remember to adjust the seat.
