I’ve been thinking about this topic a lot lately because it occurs to me that we are all enamored with grand gestures and big wins instead of slow, steady growth.

Everyone wants to win the lottery, filling up their bank accounts and savings accounts in one fell swoop. But much fewer people plan and budget to put away money into savings every month for upcoming vacations, holiday gifts or big expenses.

It seems like the most efficient practice to hire a housecleaner to come in once a month and scrub every nook and cranny of a home, instead of doing one task to keep your space clean every day.

This shows up in so many areas of life, we want the big and impressive action instead of smaller, gradual process. This creates a routine of waiting for a windfall instead of building a habit.

Consider what happens when most people get a bonus check or unexpected money. They might throw some of it at debt or buy something that’s been on their wishlist for ages. Depending on the amount and your needs that could be an overseas vacation or finally fixing the cracked windshield in your car.

This is, undoubtably, a positive mental win – you had a need or want and bam, it was solved with one good check. So why don’t we simply save to make that debt payment or repair the windshield little by little?

Human nature doesn’t appreciate small, incremental changes or progress.

Instead of taking joy in making regular, routine changes, we look for and wait for the grand gesture. But that just doesn’t work in most areas of life.

Consider the very routine task of brushing your teeth. It should be done daily, morning and night, with some toothpaste and floss for best results. You’d never brush for 36 hours starting January 1st and then ignore your teeth for the rest of the year. You take the 3 minutes twice a day to brush and floss and make it a habit.

In the same way you shouldn’t call a friend, talk for 10 hours and then ignore them for months because you’ve “put in the time” – shorter calls or texts more frequently maintain a relationship over time.

There are undoubtably times in which you can put a lot of extra into something to get ahead, think about taking a windfall check and maxing out your IRA or putting into savings accounts for your next vacation, car or emergency. That’s great, but don’t let it stop you from also contributing small amounts with more regularity.

I often think of the quiz question, would you rather have $100,000 right now or 3 pennies today that double in value for 30 days? If you’re bad at math (like me) or impulsive, the $100k sounds like the better deal. But if you put the numbers into Excel and set up the formula, you’ll see that by day 23 you’d reach over $100k with the 3 pennies and at the end of 30 days have a total of $32 million.

Small things add up and give us the added benefit of creating the people we want to be. If you’ve run the NY marathon once, that’s cool and impressive. If you’ve run every day for 5+ years, that tells me more about your rituals, your consistency and who you are.

If you give to charity once a year, that’s great! If you consistently put aside a portion of your paycheck, dividends or passive income to contribute to charitable causes, that is a very different thing.

Just something to think about as we head into “New Year, New Me!” territory and start making resolutions. Consider choosing small, regular actions over hoping for a grand win that wipes all your problems away.