The term comes from public-health responses to substance use in the 1980s — needle exchanges, naloxone distribution, supervised consumption sites. The principle, broader than the specific interventions, is that some change is meaningfully better than no change, and treating partial change as failure produces worse outcomes than treating it as progress.
The same principle applies far beyond substances. Cutting from five hours of nightly social media to two is real progress. Reaching for the phone in bed three nights a week instead of seven is real progress. Treating these as failures because they are not zero is the same mistake the abstinence-only camp has been criticized for, just with smaller stakes.
In practice
Reducing the behavior is making progress. Staying with the work long enough to consider deeper change is making progress. Programs — and products — that recognize this produce better outcomes than ones that don’t.
Related
Source
Marlatt, G. A. (1996). “Harm reduction: Come as you are.” Addictive Behaviors, 21(6), 779–788.