Depending on who you ask, habits take 27 to 100 days to form. Falling into a comfortable set of habits is a good way to make your day more efficient. It has the big advantage of helping you become consistent in everything you do.
But habits are also something we tend not to question regularly unless challenged by someone with a better method. However, this means that your habit has caused you to be operating inefficiently for some period of time because you didn’t go looking for a better way to work.
The only solution is to continually look at the tasks you do everyday and figure out whether it is still something worth doing the way you are doing it.
A personal example of this is that I had always had my phone setup to ping when an email came in. Receiving 80 to 150 emails a day meant that my phone would ping 20 times during peak hours but regularly throughout a day (and night). It allowed me to know when someone needed me but the downside was that it also disrupted me if it wasn’t me that was needed. One day I decided to challenge this method because the disruptions were more disruptive than timely knowing of pertinent messages. A week after making the change I was already seeing the productivity impact of the change. No longer was I leaving my process to open Outlook because a bell went off.
Break the habits that are holding you back. Constantly question yourself.
Hey there, I enjoyed this post. I am thinking maybe I have been looking at my problems in life from the wrong perspective… I should be changing my habits and my problems will change or get better with them. Light bulb. Hehe thank you!
Not sure about all that :). But it definitely has been a perspective that’s always come in handy for me in a lot of ways beyond just work.