6 Steps to Replace Old Habits with New Ones for Greater Productivity, Progress, Success and Happiness
Did you know? You are what you consistently do. And those actions, which can become habits, can make or break your productivity, success and happiness.
Whatever you’re doing at this very moment was probably established by a long-built habit.
J. Paul Getty once said, “The individual who wants to reach the top in business must appreciate the might of the force of habit—and must understand that practices are what create habits. He must be quick to break those habits that can break him—and hasten to adopt those practices that will become the habits that help him achieve the success he desires.”
Take stock right now of what your life is like and what your workday is like. Reflect on your productivity, your progress, and the results you’re getting. Reflect on your level of success and happiness.
What if you discover you’re NOT getting the results you want? What if you don’t feel great about some aspect of your life or business?
Are you quick to DO something about it and fix it?
If not, is it because you’re not sure of the causes? If you’re not sure, you have to trace things back.
Start with the result you want, but are not getting, and trace it back to the habits that created that situation.
If you want to adapt a mindset for high efficiency, powerful productivity, stellar success, and crazy-good happiness, you must pay attention to your habits.
As you navigate your workday in particular, pay close attention to what you’re doing and the actions you take—or don’t take. Notice how you FEEL about your actions AND your results.
Here are 4 habits you might have that can lead to lost opportunities, lost revenue, lost productivity, and strained relationships. I’ve added 4 TIPS to steer you in a more productive direction so you can start replacing habits that aren’t serving you.
1. If you miss—or are late for—appointments, calls and meetings, you may have a habit of relying on your memory to remember where to be instead of using a reliable calendar to guide you.
Productive Day TIP: Use the digital calendar in your email system and ONLY that one for ALL appointments. DO NOT use multiple calendars for multiple reasons.
DO NOT be afraid to put personal obligations on your business calendar. And ALWAYS represent the TRUE duration of each time commitment. DO NOT show a 2-hour call as only 30 minutes on the calendar.
2. If you miss deadlines and targets for tasks and projects, you may have a habit of “winging it” instead of relying on a system for managing things to do.
Productive Day TIP: Use the digital task list in your email system as the ONE and only place where tasks are managed. A single, complete inventory of tasks is the ONLY way to get REAL clarity of everything that’s on your plate. And you must be able to easily include tasks and follow-ups from email—WITHOUT using the flag.
LET GO of paper to-do lists, because they’re letting you down. SKIP using task apps on your phone that connect to nothing else. These are no better than a legal pad or any other “stand-alone” to-do list, which means it’s NOT a common denominator for ALL tasks. By-pass the planners and special notebooks that are “fun” to use, but are failing you.
As soon as you get AWAY from using a blend of tips and tactics, tools and apps, planners and paper, you can focus on using ONE system… ONE list… ONE inventory of ALL tasks… and THAT will give you the most incredible view of all you need to do so you can ACCURATELY plan, prioritize and accomplish the RIGHT tasks on time and on target.
3. If you handle email, papers, files, and other information more than once and they begin to build up—physically or digitally—you may have a habit of being indecisive.
Productive Day TIP: No matter what arrives in your “inboxes”—email, voice mail or the inbox on your desk—you must make a decision: How is this useful to you? What’s the value? When will you need this again? Keep it or don’t keep it? That’s the decision.
If you decide to keep something, now you need to determine where it goes. That information must MOVE AWAY from its SOURCE and enter into the system that is MEANT for managing THAT type of information. (Example: if you want to keep that contact information you see in an email, save it in your Contacts system.)
You must get into the habit of PROCESSING the information you receive, not only to separate what to keep from what to toss or delete, but also so you can FIND it again in the RIGHT system for that information. You will save LOADS of time when creating new habits around the usage of systems for what you keep.
4. If you love to be available to others, help others, be part of team projects, and get involved in company initiatives to the point where you’re over-committed or over-stretched, you may have a habit of saying “yes” too often.
Productive Day TIP: Being an accessible leader, a valuable team player, and a helpful co-worker are all GREAT things to be. BUT… when the scale starts to tip in the direction where everyone else is getting your time and you’re not getting much at all—or any—that’s when it’s time to do a reality check.
Without TIME, you won’t have the opportunity to think, plan or work on your own tasks or email. When you’re out of time, this causes you to go into a rushed, reactive mode. THAT causes you to work in a hurried manner and THAT causes you to make mistakes.
And if you’re REALLY feeling behind and out of time, you may procrastinate on important tasks that need your attention and you may not finish what you start, thinking you have so little time and in order to keep up, you must switch gears often. But all you may have done is left a lot of UNDONE work in your wake.
Now it’s time to take stock of your workday. Are there some habits you’ve created over the years that you’ve identified as not serving you well anymore?
You may discover that a few need replacing and if so, you have some new choices to make. And some new changes to make, too.
So, are you READY to get better results?! (Please say yes!)
Or are you just thinking about it?
Are you a DOER or a dabbler? Are you an ACTION taker or a tire kicker?
Are you COMMITTED to creating a better future or are you just interested?
If you’re just interested in learning new things, but you don’t take action on what you’ve learned, how far have you really come?
If you keep doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep getting the results you’ve always gotten. But you already know that.
So, here’s what you can do next to bring about more productivity, success and happiness…
STEP #1: Identify your workday frustrations, open loops, or lack-luster results and trace them back to the habits that most likely created those situations.
Notice that you’re not looking for “causes,” because those are too easy to blame on someone else or something else. When focusing on habits, you’re focusing on YOU and how you may have contributed to the present circumstance.
Here’s one of my favorite quotes you may want to keep in mind. This is from Jack Canfield:
“You either create or allow everything that happens to you.”
So, even when you find a CAUSE, ask yourself how you responded to it. Your “responsibility” is your “ability to respond.”
And that brings to mind THIS quote. A good one to remember from Charles R. Swindoll…
“Life is 10% what happens to you and 90% how you react to it.”
So, whatever started the ball rolling, how did you HANDLE it? And did you handle it the same way on a habitual basis?
STEP #2: Determine how you played a part in a not-so-great circumstance, list each habit that contributed to or created it and identify what each one is COSTING you.
STEP #3: List the BENEFITS when each habit is replaced with a new, more productive, success-building habit.
STEP #4: Determine which ONE habit is costing you the most.
Which ONE will bring you the most SUCCESS and will make you the HAPPIEST when it’s replaced? THAT’S the one to start with.
STEP #5: Determine the FIRST thing you will do to REPLACE that not-so-productive habit with a NEW, more productive one. If you can think of two or three steps you can take, document those, too.
STEP #6: Get moving! Find a bad habit. Fix it. And in a few weeks or months, you’ll look back and be forever glad you started today.
In closing, I’ll repeat this great quote from J. Paul Getty that reminds us all that great habits = great success.
“The individual who wants to reach the top in business must appreciate the might of the force of habit—and must understand that practices are what create habits. He must be quick to break those habits that can break him—and hasten to adopt those practices that will become the habits that help him achieve the success he desires.”
