You don’t have to blow up your life to be serious about change. This is the phrase that came to me a few days after reading another great post from Adam Mastroianni’s Experimental History.

He discusses seriousness and the fallacy that you need to be immediately serious, all the way, or else there’s no point in being serious. He continues,

“But this is like believing that the only way to get into a swimming pool is to do a cannonball off the diving board. Sure, that’s one way to do it, but you’re also allowed to sidle in, inch by inch, going “ooh!” and “oh boy that’s cold!” the whole time. You end up in the same place.

In fact, the inch-by-inch approach might even be better. The person who does the cannonball chooses to be brave once. The person who inches in has to be brave over and over, and that’s what seriousness requires. You don’t flip your Serious Switch one time and now you’re serious forever. Being serious is a tooth-brushing problem—you have to keep doing it every day until you die. Fortunately, the deeper you get into the pool, the more comfortable it gets, and the less comfortable it is to get out.

Plus, there’s always a good reason not to cannonball: it’s too much! Too fast! You can promise yourself you’ll cannonball later, when you’re braver or when the water’s warmer—which is to say, never. But dipping your pinky toe in the pool right now? There’s no reason not to. And then can stick your whole foot in tomorrow, and eventually you can work all the way up to your head.”

The same is true of change, and part of why things like Atomic Habits are so effective. That’s why I’m trying to be on team slow change for once.