Five tips for setting good habits
Given the year that we’ve just left behind us, and the challenges that 2021 is set to pose, I’m hoping that most of us will have ditched any commitments to New Year’s resolutions. Frankly, I don’t find them very helpful; they’re easy to set but hard to keep, and that combination can leave us feeling quite rubbish about ourselves — even at the best of times.
The problem is that resolutions tend to be lofty and transformative (and therefore unrealistic). I prefer to think in terms of habits. Habits are much healthier because they focus on the ‘doing’ rather than the ‘end result’ and this makes it easier for us to keep their fate within our control. Habits can also represent really small changes that, when attended to routinely and with dedication, grow into disproportionately larger outcomes over time. With this in mind, I wanted to talk about habits for our January episode (48. Good new business habits) — and I knew exactly who should join me.
My long-term colleague and friend, Clare Rees, is also the co-founder of the Small Spark Theory Institute. In recent years, Clare’s completed a Master’s Degree and written the first draft of a novel — all while co-creating the Institute’s course content and continuing her respected work as a communications consultant. Because I know her well, I can tell you that she doesn’t get up before dawn or punish herself with brutal, regimental routines. In her own words, ‘It’s just about getting into the routine of putting a key objective or focus first.’ So, with that line setting the tone, here’s a summary of Clare’s advice. Amongst all the seasonal talk of resolutions, I think you’ll find it reassuring and refreshing.
- Stop wishing you had more time
We all blame a lack of time for our failure to develop good habits and work on them consistently. But as with many things, this is simply a matter of prioritisation. Very few of us have even an hour spare in our schedule to introduce and dedicate time to a habit. We need to realise that there isn’t enough time to achieve every ambition we have. We don’t have time to do everything that we want to do, so we therefore have to choose. If you feel that you don’t have the bandwidth to dedicate to your new business habit (routinely), then it actually just means that you’re choosing to prioritise other stuff. Put your most important objectives — and the habits you’ve developed to work towards them — first.
2. Focus on what you do want (not what you don’t want)
This is a really interesting point. So often (and particularly with cursed New Year resolutions), we’re motivated to instil a new habit because of what we don’t want (eg. a gap in the forecast or a dwindling pipeline), or because it counters a habit that we believe to be bad (eg. procrastination). Clare’s advice is to stop focusing on the negative and, rather, hold in mind a vision of how things will look and feel as a result of your good habits. This is far more motivating and a far kinder way to incentivise yourself! Also, and back to the earlier reference of time, if you stick to your good habits your bad habits will have little choice but to fall away — because there is simply not time to attend to them all.
3. Don’t skip your habit more than once
Consistency is key — and being habitual takes planning. As Clare reminds us, we can’t just expect to slip new habits into our existing routines without making time for them. Of course, life will get in the way sometimes and we all have ‘off’ days, but borrowing advice from James Clear, the author of Atomic Habits, Clare suggests that we try not to skip attending to our habit more than once in a row (whether you’ve planned it as a daily, weekly or monthly task).
4. Forget willpower and focus on self-kindness
Don’t rely on beating yourself over the head with willpower in order to stick to a habit. You won’t always be motivated to engage with your habit, but it helps to just kindly remind yourself that you’ve built this process towards an objective and all you need to do to reach your ambition is continue chipping away at the task. Self-bribery is also effective. Think of a way to reward yourself or make the act of completing the task as pleasurable as possible. Celebrate your small wins; when you reward yourself (even with a clap on your own back) for sticking to your habit, your brain will begin to associate it with affirmative, encouraging feelings.
5. Know what you really want
Being sure about what we want to achieve requires spending time with our feelings and understanding what makes us feel excited and positive about the future. We’re so often juggling a myriad of roles and racing from one state of mind to another and it’s easy to forget to check in with ourselves. However, if we can maintain an awareness about our reactions, instincts and feelings, we can develop the wisdom that’s needed to identify the goals and ambitions we truly wish to strive for — and therefore the habits that we can create to help us get there. This is as relevant to new business as it is to everything else. If you keep failing to maintain the habits you’ve built around a desire to scale your business in size, for example, perhaps it’s worth revisiting that objective with a little scrutiny. Maybe what you really want is less about size and turnover, and more about profitability and the opportunity to work fewer hours. Failed habits can often be helpful by signalling that our objectives have evolved or weren’t quite right to begin with. Likewise, habits that are built around clear and authentic aspirations are much easier to keep.
I hope you’ve found this summary of Clare’s tips for building new business habits helpful, and an antidote to some of the pressure that the New Year can bombard us with. To listen to our conversation and these tips — as well as many more — in full, tune into the Small Spark Theory Podcast, episode 48. Good new business habits with Clare Rees.
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