When you want to form a new habit, it is better to optimise for repeatability rather than impact. That is, imagine that we have a hose with a kink and we are trying to water the garden. We can either try to push more through the hose, trying to get past the kink, or we can unfurl the kink and let the water pass freely.
When we try to do one big thing to move closer to our end goal – that is trying to push through the kink. But if we spend some time to do the habit slowly and repeatable. It is much easier.
Repeating this phrase in another form. We want to establish the habit before we work to correct and make it better. That is because the downside (where we stop doing the habit) is greater than any gains from trying to go big. The downside really does wipe you out.
This flows onto another point which is to never let two days slide. One day is okay, but be sure not to let the next day go to waste. This is the idea of downside greater than the upside. It is normal to have your lapses in judgement, or more pressing matters, but if we let two times in a row slide, then we go back to square one. We are no longer building on the previous day.
5 Percent a day 