February — the month of Cupid, flowers, chocolates and Valentine’s Day. It’s also a prime time for breakups before the pressure of the most romantic day of the year. Take advantage of this ‘flip side’ of the most romantic of times to break up with a number of bad habits — Both in your day to day personal life as well as professionally.
Freeing yourself from these chronic bad habits may be the key to unlocking happiness and productivity for the rest of the year:
1. Are you always late? Use a time trick to your advantage — Do you find yourself constantly saying ‘sorry’ to friends or family when arriving at an event, habitually late? Failing to show up on time goes well beyond your impact – Keeping others waiting can cause frustration, resentment and even missed opportunities or events. Give running tardy the boot with a simple trick going forward: Set all your clocks 15 minutes ahead. While this seems a bit childish, many swear by this technique to basically trick themselves into arriving on time.
2. Be honest about time management — Stop setting yourself up of failure when it comes to how you structure your day, week and month. If you know for a fact that it takes you at least 30 minutes to do a full school drop off or pick up, stop scheduling appointments that give you only 20 minutes for a drop off. Being honest with how long things take is an important ‘good habit’ to embrace moving forward.
3. Get your head out of the sand about data backup — Have you spent years thinking “my data is pretty backed up, I’m all good” or “a total system crash will never happen to me!” Stop acting like an ostrich and stick your head up and look around. Both businesses and people often feel like their data or systems are protected, when it truth there are often gaping holes in coverage. Use this time to commit to redundancy — If you use iCloud for your phone, back it up to your computer. Rely on a physical external hard drive for client file copies? Double up with a cloud option to ensure your data is always protected. Having to rebuild an entire database or personal computer can be a nightmare and massive time drain.
4. Stop falling for FOMO — Whether personal (comparing your social media feed to everyone else’s) or professional (worrying about a contract your competitor just landed) — Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) is a thief of joy and enjoying the now. Make a commitment to stop continually looking at what you don’t have and focus on what you do have — In your business life you may find this approach helps you identify and maximize previously untapped resources.
5. Failing to practice self-care — Everyone, from the newest hire hourly employee to the CEO of a Fortune 500 company needs time to recharge. Break up with the thinking that says “I don’t need to stop and rest; I can push through.” This can not only lead to costly or dangerous mistakes but also block your way to new ideas and innovation. An exhausted brain is simply trying to stay functional; it doesn’t have the energy required to brainstorm and daydream. Taking time off for vacation or scheduled offsite activities might allow your mind that little breather it needs to come up with your next big thing!
6. Setting a work-life balance and sticking to it — This bad habit runs both ways — You could be a manager or supervisor who never ‘turns off’ when going home or leaving the workday. Your family may complain you aren’t present in the moment. Even if you are trying to be engaged with your family, spending time attached to your email box or productivity app sucks your attention away. Accordingly, trying to spend time with your family while still staying on top of work things leads to you doing neither task well. When you’re away from work, be truly away. If it is impossible to be completely detached, set up realistic time frames to check back in (I will read emails from 7 – 7:30 p.m., for example), and then once that time slot is passed, commit to re-engaging in your post-work life. Consistently being sucked in a million directions ends well for no one.
7. Turn off distractions — One of the worst habits we all fall into is allowing ourselves to be distracted from tasks. Your phone beeps with an Instagram DM; a co-worker stops by your desk to chat about last night’s game — The list goes on and on. If you find yourself unable to stay on track, set up guidelines to minimize distractions. For example, if you know you need to finish an important report before lunchtime, consciously set your apps and phone to Do Not Disturb so you will not be tempted to stop and look, losing momentum with your project. Similarly even at home as well; let your family know that a closed home office door means you need time to focus and once the door is reopened you’re happy to be distracted by questions, the dog needing a walk, whatever!
8. Say goodbye to tunnel vision — Staying focused on a goal is admirable, but it’s essential to ensure it doesn’t stop you from seeing the big picture. Opening your field of view can present new opportunities both personally and professionally. Use February to step back from a project and examine if it can be assisted by an outside force or new approach. In our own personal relationships we frequently don’t see things around us because of a narrow vision. Make an effort to break this habit and identify new ways of doing things — it can be extremely rewarding!
