We have good habits in our daily life that help us reach our goals. However, we also have bad habits that stand as obstacles. Are you ready to seize the opportunity to take control and lose those unnecessary habits?
Imagine this scenario.
You decide over the weekend to be productive and knock out your to-do list. You are ready to take a step towards realizing your dreams and today is only the beginning.
The next morning, you wake up full of energy and are ready to go. You reach for your phone and you scroll through your twitter feed, watch some YouTube videos, post some comments on your friends’ Instagram, and reply to some text messages. Before you know it, you spent a few hours already. Afterward you get caught up binge-watching Netflix, playing some video games with your friends online, and then taking a nap.
The moment you realize what happened, the day is over. What happened? You intended to be productive. You made a conscious decision to do something. More importantly, you tried to wake up earlier than usual. You planned your day. How come you didn’t accomplish anything?
Why can’t I be more productive like my coworker or my hard-working neighbor? Fortunately, today is a good day to drop those bad habits and start practicing the good ones.
How can I take the first step?
Let’s look at a simple method to understand the necessary and unnecessary habits that make up our daily routine.
Say that your day is a bottle that has 24 liters of space.
Yes just like this one.
There is already water in it. Sleeping, eating, showering, cleaning, working, etc.
Think about a regular weekday without any surprises. (no extra work, no special appointments.)
Say that you sleep 7 hours, which is the minimum number of hours a healthy adult needs according to the National Sleep Foundation. Best case scenario, you work 8 hours a day and spend 1.5 hours eating.
Allow 2 extra hours for the other things, such as personal needs, showering, exercising, etc. Especially these days most of us work from home. Thus we don’t have to worry about the time you spend commuting. However, usually in a city, people on average spend 2 hours commuting to work and rest for about 3.5 hours.
3.5 hours are very useful if you are trying to move towards your goals if you could just stop the unnecessary habits from ruining your plans!
In this case, you want to fill up your bottle with new water. However, you can’t do that. It is already filled with the water you have in your bottle. If you want to add more water in your bottle, you need to remove some first. Similarly during our day if you want to do something productive, you need to open some space for it.
The things you do in your daily routine already take away so much time. In other words, if you want to gain new habits to be more productive then you need to pour out the unnecessary ones.
How to stop unnecessary habits?
Realizing you need to change is the first step towards making change. Determining what you need to do is going to help you replace useless habits with productive ones.
According to Dr. Judson Brewer, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, a very simple way to understand the causes of our bad habits is to tap into the very processes that encourage addictive behaviors in order to step out of them. He gets into it in one of his TED Talks “A simple way to break a bad habit”
He explains how to turn ‘’ reward-based learning’’ to our favor. In honor of Dr. Brewer’s inspiring speech, let’s offer some examples from our daily life. Often we are trying to pay attention to something, like being in class listening to our professor, at work in an important meeting, or maybe this blog. At some point, we will drift off into a daydream or feel the urge to check our Instagram or WhatsApp notifications. We call this a triggered behavior- reward and repeat. Dr. Brewer suggests we trigger this behavior which is controlling us and say ‘NO’. “I will continue what I am doing now and repeat.” After a while, this simple method will become automatic and help you maintain good habits.
Instead of repeating the same behavior because of a learned trigger, Dr. Brewer suggests feeling the joy of letting go and repeating it. Indeed, it is an amazing relief when you start to do it.
Now you are ready to work on the right things.
Planning my daily routine
When planning, you need to pay attention to two important steps. Setting priorities and timing.
In terms of setting priorities, Jim Temme’ s work titled “How to Set Priorities” from the book ‘Productivity Power’ is one of my favorites. You will enjoy this simple and fun method. It is a method to identifying and prioritizing your goals according to importance and urgency. It may even become your favorite method too!
I mean you must consider time management when planning. I recommend a very useful time management app called “Focus Keeper – Time management”
It is very easy to use and is effective for your time management when you are planning. Moreover, this app allows you to customize focus sessions, set goals and track your productivity with insightful charts as well.
A Fresh start with more space in your bottle
After understanding ourselves and removing our unnecessary habits, we are ready to say hello to new ones.
Start your new daily routines with a few easy phrases.
- Determine your unnecessary habits
- Get rid of these time-wasting habits
- Prepare your dream schedule with time management
- Take action!
Now your turn!
I find this Gandhi quote educational, inspirational, and insightful:
“Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
Your actions become your habits,
Your habits become your values,
Your values become your destiny.”
The destiny you have been dreaming of might just be a couple of steps away. Don’t sleep on it and start removing some water from your bottle today!