Here is Why You Need to Eliminate Bad Habits Before Building New Ones
Building new habits requires commitment and dedication. It is not just a daily routine that we take for granted but needs attention and progress. The more we tried to force in new habits, the harder it will be. There are many habits that You can achieve by setting a reminder or putting something along the way of a routine that is already applied.
Eliminating bad habits is a way to clear out the way for new ones. Building habits that last can be challenging, but it is difficult to build them when you have bad habits that can destroy that hard work. It's like a domino effect. The bad block will eventually fall and knocks out the rest of the good blocks. This is why you need first to eliminate your bad habits
Building Habits
One example is the habit of reading. If you would like to read at night before bed, you can place your book on the pillow so when you go for bed at night — the routine — you will see the book and therefore remember to read. You can apply this to many other activities.
Another example is the habit of listening to audiobooks in the car. By setting up your iPhone to be automatically connected to your car when you first start your car. This will force you — nicely — to not forget to listen to the audiobook.
Unlike reminders that can be forgotten or snoozed, this method works better than setting a reminder on your phone. It is working to hint that you can only skip the activity/habit if you voluntarily choose to skip/ignore the activity.
Spotting Your Bad Habits
Some bad habits are sometimes hard to spot. You need first to know why it is a bad habit. What makes a habit bad? The more you try to organize your lifestyle and work, have daily routines and clear agenda, the more you can spot the habits/actions that you are doing and are either slowing you down or affecting your productivity.
If you are facing one of the following, you probably have a bad habit:
- You are always late at meetings and/or deadlines.
- You are always tired or feeling lazy.
- You tend to take too long at a specific task, or you are always rescheduling your tasks.
- You are always complaining about not having enough time.
- You always find yourself procrastinating during work.
When you face such a scenario, try to sit and think about the routine you are doing. ask yourself:
- what are you looking at? Tv, phone, computer…
- where are you working? Cafe, home, office…
- What exactly distracts you? Internet, socialmedia, friends,…
After sporting the cause, reduce/eliminate it.
Eliminating the Bad Habit
After you spotted the bad habit, deal with it, and you should see improvements.
If the cause of you being always late is that you tend to get into traffic, then get out earlier. If you are feeling tired and sleepy, sleep earlier and don’t stay all night.
If you are always rescheduling tasks because you are underestimating your time to get them done, consider adding a time buffer — if you expect to finish in 2 hours, add 1 extra hour.
If you are always complaining about not having enough time, consider reducing your daily tasks or delegate the minor tasks to a freelancer — or if you have employees, you can let them do the small tasks.
Lastly, if you find yourself procrastinating on your phone, put it in a hard-to-reach area, say if you are at home, put it in the living room. If the issue is your internet, consider turning off your router entirely. The idea is to create friction between you and your bad habit.
Build Habits That Lasts
After eliminating your bad habits, start new ones that can make you more productive at work and even in your personal life. Sometimes, building certain habits can help eliminate bad one. So consider looking at what are the things that are taking you down, build habits that take you up.
Thanks for reading; I hope you enjoyed it.
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You can reach me at @alounpro on Twitter.
Have a lovely day!
— Ahmad Aloun
