Any decision to change one’s life, in such a complex context, needs to be extremely simple and easy to follow.

Luckily, Zen Buddhism is predicated on principles of simplicity. Leo Babauta, founder of Zen Habits and author of several courses and e-books on habit-changing, ex...

Babauta advises that to turn changes into habits, it’s important to make the change tiny, and let it embed: he suggests making one change every four to six weeks.

He’s boiled down all his teachings into what he calls one “algorithm…a series of steps that you can apply to make any change, n...

• Start very small.
• Do only one change at a time.
• Be present and enjoy the activity (don’t focus on results).
• Be grateful for every step you take.

The beauty of the method is that its smallness removes the problems that result from many self-help recommendations and resolutions: too often they leave people quickly overwhelmed by the task in hand, or swamped by a sense of failure.

The change should be so small it’s no...