Trim Tabs

It’s officially spring in Alaska, and days are long again. It’s a funny mix of new beginnings and the impending "sins of winter" (dog treasures buried under the deep encrusted snow).

Spring is when I focus on installing "trim tabs" in my life to help things feel more fun, and run more smoothly, with less effort on my part. 

"Trim tabs" are a concept I learned from the aviation world.

When a pilot taxis a small bush plane out to the runway, lines up and takes off, the plane and the pilot use a ton of fuel, energy, mental focus, and control to lift off the ground and into the air. But once they are up at a cruising altitude, they can set the "trim," a tiny strip of metal that acts as a small rudder in the air.

The pilot isn’t required to trim the plane, but if they don't, they’ll have to use their full focus and energy to keep the plane level and pointed in the right direction. The result is a bumpier ride for the passenger and can leave the pilot tired and cranky.

If they trim the plane, the plane stays on course by itself so they can turn on the music and revel at the majestic, blue glaciers. So if it takes less effort, why wouldn't you trim out a plane, right? A better result that's easier... two, please!

The same thing applies to our life and our dreams. Once we figure out what we want, we can set up the conditions to make meeting our goals inevitable. The trick is to use the basic principle of trim.

Trim is SMALL.

TINY, TINY adjustments applied over a long period of time.

Um... boring!

I don’t know about you, but I’m hard-wired for the big push of takeoff, heroic efforts, all systems go, let's launch!! Not so much the mundane daily systems that make my life sustainable and so, so much more enjoyable.

I try my best to be compassionate with myself for my lack of natural talent in the consistency department. Instead of repeating the lifelong criticisms my caregivers and teachers let roam around aimlessly in my head, I try to focus on teaching myself to build the systems that give me the life I want, without having to work so hard to keep things from going off the rails.

Enter installing trim (aka habits) into your brain. (I know, blech! Me too, but hear me out.)

Habits or routines are the trim tabs or automations of life. And if you've failed at habit building in the past, I'm with you. I don't know if this will work for you, but I'll tell you what I learned that helped me switch my belief that I just couldn't "do" habits, to having tons of them in my life now.

The number one thing I had to learn was that trim-tab-style-habits are SMALL.

It needs to be a change that is...

...small enough to become permanent.

A small tweak in thought or behavior applied consistently over time will create a result with little to no effort.

Did I mention it takes patience and self-compassion? I had to laugh at myself with my first trim-tab-style walking goal a few years ago.

I'd set a goal of walking half a mile, about 1,200 steps a day. I thought it was a pretty small goal. And I was doing okay, ticking off at least a few little blue calendar dots a week. But two weeks in I got a wild hair and decided I should increase my daily minimum. So I upped it to 5 miles a day or about 12,000 steps.

Wait, what? A 900% increase?

It backfired. (Shocking 😮.) I did good for two days, then nothing. Zero walking. It was worse than having no goal.

Why? The jump was too big for my mind and my body. I just couldn't make the leap. It wasn't about willpower or discipline, but my capacity.

I tried to keep it in perspective, chuckle, and course-correct.

Then I remembered the better-than-nothing plan that had worked for my meditation practice. My meditation goal is "try to do something" even 60 seconds, every day. Uber lazy, and it works. In fact, I hit a 3,063 day streak yesterday (yes... 3,063). What's even more surprising is my daily average is about 14 minutes a day, far more than my 1-minute goal.

So I changed my walking goal to "try to do anything" even 1 minute, as long as it happens every day. And I put a note in my calendar to check in to see if I need to increase it in a year, no earlier.

Is it the Charles Atlas fitness plan of the century? I doubt it. But is it likely to build a habit of walking every day without the dramatic flailing? Research says yes. And over the next 80 years, this small tweak has the potential to pay off big time with my health, happiness, and overall satisfaction with my life.

Update: I first wrote this back in 2018, it's now 2026. It's 8 years later and I've walked every day, at least 1 minute a day. It worked because it was a goal I could do even during years when I was really sick. The goal was small enough to become permanent. Now I walk between 9,000-25,000 steps a day, but the best part is, these walks have created some of the most beautiful moments of my life. Pretty good in my book.

Now what about you?

Where do you make progress in fits and starts but wish you could get consistent traction? 

Is this where you need to install a trim tab style habit in your life?

First written 4/18/2018 - Updated 3/21/2026