Creatures of bad habits Avoid these 5 things that can hamper success
According to researchers at Duke University, up to 40 percent of our behaviors on any given day are driven by habit.
That’s a lot of time on autopilot. Now that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if you’ve put in the work and been diligent about building good habits.
Unfortunately, most of us haven’t. We watch Netflix when we could be working on our business strategy. We eat junk food when we know healthier meals will give us the energy to get through the day. We daydream at work when we could be focusing on doing a better job for our clients.
Bad habits are everywhere in our lives, and they’re hard to get rid of. But if you’re willing to put in the work, you can build better habits. Here are five things to stop doing now:
Focusing too much on the end goal and not enough on the process
Marketing guru Seth Godin calls this a “crash diet” in which people put all their energy into looking for the quickest route to our goal or behavior change, rather than starting small and building good habits.
If you want to make real, sustainable change, it means breaking down your new habit into the smallest chunks possible and working through them. Studies have shown the momentum you get from making these small changes is much more likely to help you build that new habit.
Or, as Sonia Thompson, founder of TRY Business School, says: “Setting the bar too high can serve to demotivate and discourage you from ever getting started.”
Taking on too much change at once
According to research by psychologist Ray Baumeister and John Tierney, the average professional has 150 tasks to be done at any given time. This might sound ridiculous, but look at your own to-do list. I bet there’s more jobs listed than you could do today, let alone in the next two days.
It’s no wonder research from the startup iDoneThis found that 41 percent of the to-do list tasks their users inputted were never accomplished.
Willpower is a limited resource, and when you’re building good habits, taking on too much at once gives you an easy excuse to put off the behaviors you’re trying to make routine.
Procrastinating before you even get to your new routine
Habits are built on a three-step program: First people experience a cue that triggers action, then they do the action, and finally they receive a reward that tells the brain that they should do that action again in the future. But how can you build good habits if you don’t even get to step 1?
Procrastination is bad for all parts of work, but especially when it comes to building new habits. To get over this, follow the example of Instagram cofounder Kevin Systrom: “If you don’t want to do something, make a deal with yourself to do at least five minutes of it. After five minutes, you’ll end up doing the whole thing.”
Researchers say this works because telling yourself you’ll only do five minutes of a task lowers our inhibitions and gets rid of the fear and anxiety that causes us to procrastinate.
Creating a deadline, not a schedule
One of the biggest mistakes people make when trying to build new habits is setting a strict deadline on when they’re going to happen. When they do this, author James Clear explains, they set themselves up for failure.
Instead, researchers have shown that the power of habits comes in sticking to a schedule. If you want to be healthier and build healthy habits, start by exercising every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. If you want to make writing a habit, say you’ll write 200 words every morning. The power is in the process.
Not being excited enough about the reward
No, you shouldn’t focus too much on the end goal, but without any excitement driving you forward, you will never build the habit. Countless studies have shown that a trigger and a reward aren’t enough to build a new habit that lasts. Instead, the brain needs to start expecting, anticipating and craving the reward that the habit provides.
This all comes down to motivation. Make sure that whatever reward you’re getting from your habit — whether it’s the rush of endorphins from exercise or the pride of publishing a new blog post — you think about it regularly and build up that excitement in your head.