Since the start of the year, I’ve found myself developing new habits and new routines. In particular, I’ve upped my exercise and changed my nutrition and I feel a lot better for it. And within two weeks, it’s become my new norm. It doesn’t take long to develop new habits and shake habits you want to get rid of. Then it’s just about keeping it up.
So, what habits do you want to change in your working day? How are you going to develop the right routine that guarantees success?
First is to highlight the bad habits. I have a lot of push back from my clients that they haven’t got time in their working day for social media. Yet when I ask them how often they check their emails, there is a coy downward glance. Emails are such a time drain. We don’t need to respond to emails the minute they come in. In fact, it’s likely that nothing will change if you check your emails only twice a day (12pm and 4pm are good times I find). And turn off those pesky notifications that pop up telling you you have a new email. You might find you can lose up to an hour a day by not being constantly plugged in to your emails.
Another bad habit is doing lots of different tasks at once, and allowing yourself to become quickly distracted while doing them. I’ve become more organised with my office days. I don’t get much time in the office. I only work a couple of days a week, and often those days are out on the road training businesses or speaking at events. I have a day-to-view organiser, which is split in to different times of the day. So, on my office days, I schedule my whole day out with the tasks I want to complete. They are appointments with myself and I won’t break them for anything. It means I get more stuff done. I don’t jump from one job to the next to the next. I complete a task and then move on to the next task. It works! You get all the stuff done on your to-do list for that day, and work more efficiently on that job and I find I have pockets of time to stop for a coffee and a social media catch up.
So, once you’ve dropped the bad habits, start to pick up good ones. Setting aside 10 minutes in your day to schedule some social media updates for example. Or doing the action you like least at the start of the day, so it’s done with and you can get on with the more enjoyable tasks. Checking your email less and planning out your day. Putting your mobile in a drawer on silent so you aren’t tempted to check what your mates are up to on Facebook! Once you’ve taken the action for a few days, it will become a habit. And you will feel better for it too, as you’ll be getting more stuff done and spending less time procrastinating!
Give it a go! I’d love to hear what habits you want to get rid of and the routines you’re going to introduce!
