If tiny habits are the compound interest to self-improvement, it seems likely that all the little negative things I’m feeling this morning are compounding as well.
“Damn it! Who broke a dish?” I call out. I’m crouching in the kitchen searching for a glass container in the bottom cabinet. My spouse Janyce is in another room getting herself ready to make the early train. I carry the broken pieces over to the counter by the sink and look out the kitchen window, holding my hand under the running water. A tiny red line is forming on the tip of my finger. I can see it in the reflection of the window, but I’m more focused on the sunrise barely casting a halo over my neighbor’s house across the street and my car heaped over the top with icy hard snow. This morning, the radio announced that the sun wouldn’t start rising until 7 a.m. and by 4 p.m. it would be fully dark again.
“Where is the rest of the sweet potato?” I call out.
“I took half,” says Janyce, now walking into the kitchen. “Do you want it?”
I’m already in the middle of removing it from her container in the refrigerator and transferring it to mine.
“Really, you can have the whole thing if you want,” she says.
“I want the whole thing,” I say.
She walks by me, moving swiftly, opening the coat closet door to pull out her green wool scarf, the one we bought together on a trip to Cape Breton last fall. I’ve already lost my matching red one. I watch her cross it once around her neck to make a V shape, the color popping against her purple shirt.
“The eggs are cold,” I say, as I take a bite from the one I’m holding.
“I know, I made them hours ago,” she says.
I’m only just now dressed, having dragged myself into the kitchen with minutes to spare before we need to leave.
“The scale was up a few pounds,” I say. “I’m a moose. And I cut my finger.”
“Pauvre, no!” she says, calling me by my pet name, trying to get me to smile.
James Clear, in his NY Times best-selling book Atomic Habits says, “the difference a tiny habit can make over time is astounding. If you can get one percent better each day for one year, you’ll end up 37 times better by the time you’re done.” I read that line from bed earlier, sipping coffee and staring at the chart he provided. Janyce was with her trainer in the pitch black of the morning. I was sunk down into the covers with my feet tucked under the warm dog. I had the desire to get up early and get myself to my own gym like I had promised myself the day before, but I made it as far as the bathroom scale.
If tiny habits are the compound interest to self-improvement, it seems likely that all the little negative things I’m feeling this morning are compounding as well.
“We’re just going to make it, she says. “But only if we leave right now.” I grab my lunch bag, my glasses, my phone, and step into my untied hiking boots snatching up my winter parka in a rush. In the Jeep, Janyce makes small talk by herself while I count mounds of snow piled on the tops of railings and fence posts as we drive by. Our town has recovered from the first early December storm and the commuting traffic is humming along.

There are days when Janyce will gently point out to me the many complaints I’ve managed to utter before getting dressed in the morning. It’s usually enough to jostle me out of a funk. But not today. The thing about Janyce is that she’s never had a problem with self restraint. A box of chocolates will be in the cabinet for months and she will have one a day, maybe two. If she is sick with the flu, she’ll still be careful to pour the Chickarina soup, leaving at least half of the tiny pasta pearls at the bottom of the can. And when it comes to trying to cheer me up from a surly start to the morning, she’ll give it a couple of tries but then will know the right time to stop.
The train is pulling into the station and we’re hustling to find an opening in the snowbank. I’m still not talking and in my own head thinking about the movie we went to see over the weekend, when the first flakes began to lightly powder the streets. My friend Sam sent me a FB message earlier that day, “You have to see this film,” he said. “A lot of details, feels very much like your writing.”
The movie, Marriage Story, is about the end of a marriage and the director Noah Baumbach expertly uses restraint as the movie unfolds. At the start, we don’t know why this longtime couple with a small child is divorcing and the film takes its time getting to those reasons. We do know why they love each other, though, as each one of them is instructed to compile a list of their reasons from their mediator, and we hear them reading it over scenes from their life in New York. The wife, played by Scarlett Johansson, chooses not to read hers out loud to her soon to be ex-husband in the mediator’s office. Instead, she moves through many of the early scenes mostly holding herself back from her anger, leaving many things left unsaid. Her personal transformation happens throughout the film once she begins taking action, changing one small thing that compounds into larger things—her hair, her move, her job, and ultimately the new relationship she begins to form with her family.
I have my hand on Janyce’s knee beside me in the two seater on the train as I look out the window, snapping a commuting photo for Instagram as we blur by the Del Carte woodland and pond. It’s a beautiful morning with bright sun lighting up the snow covered trees. My mom’s coffee cup emoji pops up on my phone and I send one back.
How are you feeling today? reads the text on my screen.
Not great, I type back. Wrestling with my mood. Trying to notice the good things instead of the bad but it’s not working.
Fight through it, she texts back.
I know what she means when she says fight. She means don’t add one more complaint to those that have been piling up in my mind all morning. But the word fight is wrong. What I need to do instead is soften into my dark emotions. I need to be nice to myself.
“Are you getting off at Ruggles?”says Janyce. The train jerks three times before stopping and all the passengers standing in their winter coats in the aisle look up from their cellphones.
“Im going to walk over the bridge today,” I say. She smiles at me as I squeeze past her, handing me the lunch bag I was leaving behind on the seat. Tomorrow it will be Saturday morning and we’ll drink coffee together while she edits my blog post, maybe we’ll make time to go on a hike through the snowy woods, and I’ll have another chance to dig out my car and drive myself to the gym. But today I’m holding myself back from complaining, choosing to not say anything more about the morning and my own harsh self critique.
Maybe I’ll stop at Whole Foods and pick up a tiny tree for my office.