Are Your Habits Derailing Your Day?

We all have the same 24 hours in the day and yet some of us are more productive than others. By productive, I mean that you were able to put your head on the pillow at the end of the day knowing that you’d accomplished the things you wanted to achieve; the things that were most important to you.

Each moment of each day we have a choice. When we say, “yes” to something, we are saying “no” to everything else. The problem is that we often say “yes” and “no” out of habit. By habit, I mean the patterns of behaviors that have become so routine that they happen without having to think about them.

As an example, it’s 9 am, you sit down at your computer to work on your strategic plan. You’ve been waiting for this day, excited to put your ideas to paper. You spend the first 15 minutes trying to track down the data you need. As you open a file you ‘think’ might have the information you are looking for, you come across a business idea you’d long forgotten about. This takes you down the rabbit hole of researching this concept. 20 minutes later, you hear the “bing” on your computer. A familiar sound notifying you that you’ve got a new message. You click on the message and turn your attention to responding to this note. As you hit “send,” you peek at the clock and are shocked to see that, somehow, it’s already 11 am. Settling back into the report, you hear a knock on your door. Your employee wants to discuss a project they are working on with you. I could go on, but I think you get the picture.

What happened here? You walked into the day saying “yes” to crafting your strategic plan. Why are you walking out of the day feeling frustrated and, perhaps, resentful and having made no progress on this goal? And, how can you work to prevent this from happening again?

When I work with clients to achieve their goals, one of the first things we look at is what might get in the way? If we were to look at the example above, you might have listed things like:

• Employees coming in to ask me something;
• Emails; messages; calls that need to be answered;
• Having to hunt for the information I need; and,
• Getting distracted.

By working preemptively to address these potential obstacles, you enable yourself to begin to create new habits. Habits that support your saying “yes” to accomplishing your goals. What might that look like?

• Letting your team know that you’ll be working on a significant project and need to be undisturbed;
• Set up a schedule where you’ll check your messaging applications a couple of times throughout the day (and only attend to those that truly require immediate attention);
• Schedule an hour ahead of time to gather the data you’ll need; and,
• Close all apps and notifications that might distract you.

By asking yourself the question, “what might get in my way?” you can begin to identify the habits that may be derailing your day. And, with a bit of planning, you can begin practicing new habits. Habits that see you feeling accomplished at the end of the day.