How to change habits
I work with people, mainly women, who usually say to me “I want to be more organised” or “Why cant I stop procrastinating?” or “How can I be more productive?”. I understand exactly what they mean. But there is something that we work on together that is key to how they see themselves and their desires and how they can achieve it, and it’s all to do with habits.
So what is a habit? A habit is a behaviour that we perform automatically which solves the problems of life with as little effort as possible, things like brushing our teeth, taking a shower. Some people might have habits like making a cup of tea as soon as they wake up in the morning for example. But we often want to do MORE automatically, or even stop habits that we see as bad habits like reaching for a chocolate biscuit when we open the snack drawer!
In the famous book, Atomic Habits, James Clear the book’s author breaks down the key things which help people to make new habits or break old ones. He says that…
If a habit is hard to remember - make it obvious. An example of this could be putting your box of vitamin pills next to your teabags so you see them each morning and are more likely to take them
If you have trouble starting the habit - make it attractive. This could be where you tie it in with something you really like doing for example, "after I go for my run, I will meet a friend for a coffee". Being in a group or having an accountability partner for something can have the same impact in that if you are working with other people to the same end goal it can be motivating i.e. – that makes it more attractive.
If you find it hard to do - make it easy. Clear says that practice, not planning, is most effective at making a habit stick and that we should focus on taking action, not being in motion. The more you do it, the more automatic it becomes. What he means by “taking action not being in motion” is, don’t spend hours planning and researching the new exercise routine… just start doing it as all that planning does not help with the habit creation, the doing it does. In this same idea about making it easy. Also, use the 2 minute rule; so a new habit should take no more than 2 minutes to do when you start it
Finally, If you find the habit difficult to stick to - make it satisfying eg get a habit tracker and tick off each time you complete the habit
So what has all this got to do with being organised as a business founder or as a busy person in business? Ah-ha! Well this comes down to; Don't think about the outcome, think about the person you want to be. What does this mean? The goal shouldn't be " I want to my life to run smoothly and never forget another appointment" ie. I want to be organised. It should be " I want to become a person who habitually records my appointments and regularly checks my calendar. Different right?!
Another one could be “I want to be productive at work and stop procrastinating messing around on my phone”. Instead you should focus on building the habit “ I will put my phone in another room when I sit down at my desk to work”.
I have so so many examples of this when working with my clients and it’s incredible to say the changes embed over time as habits change, their mental clutter cloud starts to clear and they feel in control and get the stuff they want to get done, done.
Follow me over on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/un.scramble_me/ for more tips or check out my website https://unscrambleme.co.uk/ to find out more about how you can work with me to regain control of your life.
