In many ways, human beings are the ultimate “auto-pilot” machine. We run on habitual action for what scientists estimate 40 to 45% of the time. These routines shape our daily lives, but we often fail to acknowledge that they shape the quality of our lives in the long term.
Jay Shetty shares this in Think Like a Monk:
Doing the familiar creates room for discovery. Rules and routines ease our cognitive burden so we have bandwidth for creativity. Structure enhances spontaneity. And discovery reinvigorates the routine.
I suspect that if we had to consciously think about and plan for getting out of bed, finding our clothes and getting dressed, going through our grooming routines, and making breakfast, we would be too exhausted to do much more.
And that’s when habits are a good thing. They enable us to do daily life activities, like eating and driving and using our devices, without much mental energy expended. We don’t need to think. We just do. Habits that serve us well enhance our days and our lives. And it is those small actions, repeated day after day that yield big outcomes over time.
Habits can also be a horrible thing. Ask any smoker or couch potato or heavy drinker about how difficult it is to let go of ingrained habits. Not only are these habitual behaviors, but they are especially insidious for their short-term pleasure hit.
Practice and repetition ingrain habits into our days. Habits become even more sticky when there is some reinforcement (others around us) or reward (the sugar high)—even though the reinforcement and reward may be short-lived and detrimental in the long term.
Here is the good news. We can build new habits and break old ones. The key is turning off autopilot mode and taking control of what habits we want in our lives and where they are taking us.
We tend to only think about habits in our personal lives. What we eat. How often (or not) that we exercise. How we sleep.
Yet honing habits at work is especially powerful to be more effective. So I’d like to provide you with a four examples (two of mine and two stories from our coaching clients) of the ways in which honing the right habits at work can be in your best interest.
Here are four examples, two from my coaching work and two personal ones.
Coaching Example: I was coaching a mid-level executive whose team was about to mutiny as they saw their leader as cold, aloof, uncaring – and demanding. 360 feedback brought this to her attention and caused her great angst, as it was not at all who she wanted to be at work.
So we substituted one habit for another. This leader’s habit was to come in daily, focused and on a mission. She came straight from the parking lot to her office, past her team with nary a word of hello or a wave or a smile.
In her mind, this was efficient. In the minds of her team, this was proof that they were “invisible” and that she only reached out to them with a task or to-do.
And so we worked together to build a different morning habit. She intentionally allocated 15 minutes on her walk from car to office and greeted every team member. She didn’t have an agenda. She merely said hello, asked how they were, and then listened.
It wasn’t easy. She found herself impatient and sometimes distracted by the pile of work she knew awaited her. But she hung in there, until the new start to the day became habitual.
And here is the funny thing—building this small habit reframed how her team saw her, changing their willingness to work with her and support her. So much so that one year later, one of her direct reports said to me, “I don’t know what you did to her, but she’s a different person now.” And all we did was to find a substitute behavior that was aligned with her goals and created a habit out of it.
Coaching Example: The president of a regional division had a habit of “just showing up” for meetings. In his mind, he could “wing it” in the moment. And sometimes he could. And sometimes he couldn’t.
His habit was based on a few beliefs that were challenged when he got his 360 feedback. What he saw as “in the moment”, others saw as “unprepared”. What he saw as not wasting his valuable time in planning, others saw as dismissing the value of their time when they had to level set, explain again, or get things back on track.
His ”just showing up” habit served him well in other, faster-paced environments, where he had deep expertise and could wing it most of the time. It was costing him credibility, trust, and engagement in his current role.
And so a new habit was called for. Knowing the lure of the old way of doing things, he enlisted the assistance of his very able and strong assistant. As she reviewed his upcoming schedule, she crafted a simple one-page briefing sheet. It included who he was meeting with, the purpose of the meeting, and any key stakeholders or issues he needed to be aware of.
With some of the planning pre-work out of the way, he was able to take a short amount of time at the end of each day to prepare for the upcoming meetings the following day.
We’re still too early in the process to declare either victory or failure. And we’ve seen that establishing this new habit is hard. There has been backsliding and a few bumps in the process. Yet I know, sticking to it will yield great results. Perhaps not immediately, but over time.
Personal Example: For many years, my begin-the-day habit was to start my morning at breakneck speed, shaving time spent on activities that needed to be done before I started work to the bare minimum. The thought was that the less time it took me to awaken, dress, eat breakfast, and get to work, the longer I could sleep. Fast was the norm—a race from wake to work. I was going from deep sleep to a sprint to work in a mere 20 minutes.
My new habit is slow. I awaken at least an hour before work time. I use that time to do four things:
- Journal
- Read something uplifting
- Meditate for 10 minutes
- Stretch
This new habit sets the tone for a work day that is centered, calm and focused. My priorities are clear as is my thinking. I am focused rather than frazzled. I am centered rather than running at a crazy break-neck speed.
Granted, there are some very early days when I opt out of the routine, yet it is an intentional choice. While it may be hard to quantify the difference in my results, the quality of my days has improved one hundredfold.
Personal example: Conversely, I’ve cultivated a better habit for the end of my work day. The old way was to work up until the last possible moment and rush out the door. I would valiantly crank out one more email, check off one last task on the to-do list, or make that one last call.
The new habit I’ve established is taking 15 minutes at the end of the day to review my to-do list, scratch the completed items, and add the new things that made the list. I then prioritize it for the next day, so I know the night before the most important three things to accomplish the following day. In this time, I review tomorrow’s meetings and envision how the day will unfold. I finish by looking ahead to the next 10 days and add to my list anything I need to work on now to be prepared for the near future.
This fifteen-minute habit has helped me be more present in the evening after work, for I am clear-headed about what needs to be done the next day. I spend fifteen minutes and save the 45 minutes I used to spend making order from the chaos I had left the day before. I’ve been able to accomplish more in the same (or less) amount of time, as I’m focused on the most important actions.
These four examples illustrate both the magic and mystery of habits at work. Small actions done repeatedly over time yield future outcomes. Those small actions can either work for you or work against you. Because it is those day-to-day actions that “make us who we are.” We can choose them by being intentional and building helpful habits or continuing on autopilot.
I encourage you to explore where you want to land, and to ask if your current habits and auto-pilot behaviors will get you there? Or not?
And in the spirit of learning from each other, please share some work habits you have cultivated that you find helpful.
Footnote: Learning new habits is hard, but unlearning them is even harder. In this blog, I’ve suggested that developing some habits can be helpful to you professionally as well as personally. If you need a really good resource on the mechanics of how to either establish or extinguish a habit, I recommend Atomic Habits by James Clear.
