Habits are powerful, yet we rarely give them much thought. That’s the nature of habits, after all. They’re small repetitive actions that become almost automatic to us. However, for professionals who want to advance and grow, overlooking their habits is not an option. When left unchecked, bad habits can develop and limit our progress. And when we don’t pay attention to the habits that we form, we miss out on valuable opportunities to fully maximize their potential. While the coming of a new year often brings about thoughts of major goals and year-long resolutions, I’d encourage professionals to give equal attention to these much smaller actions. Though they’re small, the cumulative effect of our habits is significant. Before you head into 2020, consider taking stock of the habits you have now and determine whether they’re helping you get where you want to go, or limiting your ability to achieve the success you desire. Here are some strategies to get started:
Identify and Assess Your Current Habits
With your goals clearly laid out in front of you, you can gauge the impact and effectiveness of your current habits. Are they helping you move closer to the things you’re striving to achieve? Are they helping you create the life you envision for yourself? Or are they slowing you down? It can take some time to reflect and identify our habits, as some habitual actions can go unnoticed. Look to your mornings and evenings and think about an average day at work. This can help identify the habits you have currently. Then, you can determine their quality. For habits that are helping, of course, keep them in your routine. Perhaps you even try to strengthen them. For habits that are limiting your potential, however, bringing your attention to them is the first step in weeding them out.
Look at the Big Picture
Whether you’re setting a new resolution for the year ahead or simply have goals that you’re working on more generally, you want to keep this in mind when you think about your habits. You might have specific goals you can point to or even a more general vision of the life you want to create for yourself. Though you’re thinking more long term here, whether that’s the next few months or the next few years, it’s good to highlight whatever specifics you can so that you’re clear on exactly what it is you’re striving towards. As you assess your habits, you can assess them in relation to these larger goals.
Identify New Habits
As I mentioned above, habits have the potential to be powerful. So, how can we access that? Instead of just letting our habits form organically without much thought, we can create ones to support our unique goals. Which habits do you want to incorporate in the year ahead? Remember, habits are often small. These things may not look like massive changes, and that’s okay. It’s important to trust in the cumulative effect that they’ll ultimately have.
Create a Strategy
Finally, you want to make a plan for yourself. Which habits will you work to eliminate? Will any of these be especially challenging to change? If so, see if there are some systems you can put in place to support your success. It’s also great if you can replace a bad habit with a good one to fill the gap. When it comes to new habits, if there’s many you’d like to incorporate, consider prioritizing them and adding a few at a time slowly. If we try to create too many all at once, we run the risk that none of them will really stick.
Though habits may look much smaller than yearly resolutions, these small actions contain just as much, if not more potential. This new year, consider taking the time to identify and review your current habits and envision some new habits to incorporate that better support your desired goals. From there, you can build a plan that will help you kick off 2020 ready for success. Are there any habits you want to eliminate for 2020? What about habits you plan to incorporate? I’d love to hear your thoughts.