4 Simple Ways Successful
People Build Awesome New Habits
To build a better business, start by building a better you.
As an entrepreneur, you are your business, so doing just
what you've done before will only make you less productive, less
effective, less healthy, less fit -- less everything - than
you could potentially be.
The
growth of your business is at least in part based on you:
improving your performance, increasing your output, focusing even more on the
things that matter most....
The solution? Build great new positive
habits.
Here
are four easy ways to build new habits from Belle Beth Cooper, co-founder of Hello Code, which makes Exist, a cool app that connects all of your services to turn
that data into insights about your life -- think a quantified self on
steroids.
1. Start small.
BJ Fogg is the king of starting small with new habits, and
his program Tiny Habitsfocuses on this approach. The idea is to focus on
building the habit itself, rather than worrying about how big the impact is.
·
Here's a good example: Say you want to start
a habit of flossing your teeth every night. To build a successful habit, start
with something tiny: flossing just one tooth. I know it sounds
crazy, but it works. If you're building the habit of flossing just a single
tooth each night, three things will happen:
·
You'll feel silly about not doing
it. Flossing a single tooth is so easy, it's hard to feel OK about
skipping it.
·
You'll probably floss more than one
tooth. Getting started on anything is the biggest hurdle. Once we've
started, it's almost easier to just keep going.
·
You'll build the habit. Although
flossing just one tooth each night probably won't make your dentist happy,
after a few weeks the action will start to become a habit -- something you
do automatically, without thinking.
Once you've built up the habit, then you can
incrementally add to it. In our example, you'd start flossing two teeth per
night, then three, and soon you'd be flossing all of your teeth without
having to think about it.
Now let's look at some examples of how you
could apply this method to building healthier work habits:
Develop
the habit of single-tasking. If you're struggling to stay focused and beat
distractions, try building the habit of working on one task at a time.
Start by doing that for five minutes at a time. After five minutes, relax and
allow distractions.
Later, try another five minutes of pure
focus. When five minutes becomes easy, work on doing 10 minutes at a time, and
then 15.
Soon you'll find you can spend half an hour
on a task without struggling to stay focused.
Develop
the habit of drinking more water. What
if you wanted to drink more water during your workday? Start small with just
one extra glass of water. You can even make it a really small glass. Just drink
one extra glass a day for a month.
If you're still struggling after a month,
keep practicing (and check the other strategies I've mentioned here for more
help). Once you have the habit down you can upgrade to a larger glass and
later add a second one.
Develop
the habit of staying organized. Trying to stay on top of your calendar? Start with a
weekly reminder to look over your calendar for the coming week.
Each Sunday night, when your reminder sounds,
take a minute to look at the events you have scheduled for the week. When you
find that's easy and can do it without thinking, try setting an alarm every
night to review the next day's calendar.
2. Stack habits.
One of
the most powerful methods for building new habits is to stack them on
existing habits.
We all have plenty of existing habits:
getting your morning coffee, logging on to your computer, walking to the train
station, eating a snack. You do those things without thinking about them.
They're habits. Now use those habits as triggers for new habits.
Here are some examples:
·
Increase exercise. To exercise more, stack a
new habit on your morning coffee. Every time you get coffee, take a walk
around the block. Or start getting your coffee at a cafe a little farther from
work, so you naturally have a longer walk.
·
Strengthen work relationships. To get to
know colleagues better, stack a new habit on your midmorning snack or bathroom
breaks. Every time you get your snack, stop for five minutes to chat with
people in the break room. Or, when you go for a bathroom break, stop and chat
with someone on the way back to your work area.
·
Read more. To read more, stack a new
habit on your commute. Grab an audio book to listen to. Or, every day when you
have lunch -- which is surely an existing habit -- take a book with you.
There are plenty of ways to stack habits.
Start with something you already do every day and use that as a trigger to
remind you to do your new habit.
Just pick a habit so small and easy that it's
not difficult to perform, and attach it to a trigger that happens every day
around the same time -- that's an awesome way to build new work habits.
3. Make it obvious.
Another
of my favorite tricks for building habits is to put the tools you need right
in front of you. Having whatever equipment you need easily
available removes the barrier of getting started and acts as a reminder.
·
Drink less soda. Say you want to drink
less soda and more water while you're at work. Keeping a water bottle on your
desk means you don't have to get up; you can just reach out and take a sip
while you're working. Plus, seeing the water bottle all day serves as a
reminder to keep up your habit.
·
Exercise at lunch. If you want to go for
a jog or hit the gym during your lunch break, put your equipment in easy reach.
Set your running shoes or gym bag beside your desk so you can quickly grab them
as you head out the door at lunchtime.
·
Leave work on time. When your habit
isn't based on something physical, you can still use this technique. The trick
is to make any barriers to acting on your habit easy to overcome. If you
make plans with your family or friends after work each night, you'll have a
good excuse that pulls you away from your desk. Your plans don't have to be
complicated; they could be as simple as setting a specific time your family has
dinner every night. Take it a step further by making it an appointment in
your calendar.
4. Reward yourself.
Now for the fun part: Every time you perform
your new habit, celebrate. Reward yourself for putting in the effort.
Charles Duhigg, author of The
Power of Habit, is a big
proponent of rewarding yourself after completing
a habit. Duhigg's approach to habits is based around a simple three-part cycle:
the cue (or trigger), the habit itself, and then the reward.
After building up enough of these, Duhigg
says, "when your brain is exposed to a certain cue, it'll kind of go on
autopilot, because it craves the reward it expects to come at the end."
Building
habits over time means focusing on doing something small every day (or at least
very often). Celebrating each time you complete a habit reinforces the value of
doing that small thing over and over, rather than reaching for a
far-off goal.
If you're trying to lose weight, daily
weigh-ins can be de-motivating. Rewarding yourself every time you go to the
gym, on the other hand, helps you to build up a lasting habit of regular
exercise -- regardless of the long-term consequences.
Rewards can come in any form that makes you
feel good about sticking with your habit. It might be stopping for a break,
having a snack, or simply patting yourself on the back.
A good
way to make sure you're staying on track and rewarding yourself for your
progress is to use
an app like Lift or Balanced to
check off your habit each time you perform it.
If you struggle to stay on track or you need
a bigger reward to stay motivated, try grabbing an accountability partner. Find
a colleague or friend who will keep you accountable and cheer you on when you
succeed. (I always tell my co-founder when I go for a run, and his support
makes me feel even better about sticking with my habit.)
Most
important, just pick one habit to
build up at a time. It's really easy to get overwhelmed by
trying to make several changes at once.
Plus, once you've successfully built one new
habit, you have another starting point for stacking on a new habit!
JEFF HAYDEN
http://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/4-ways-successful-people-build-awesome-new-habits-first-90-days.html?cid=em01014week04a
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