Are you creating good habits or bad habits

Sunday, May 16th, 2010 at 12:57 pm

Are you creating good habits or bad habits [ 3:41 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Well one of the things I was planning and have been lax about is a weekly rant. Part of it is finding topics and part of it is it is not currently part of my routine.

Habits are hard to start and can be even harder to break. This is one of the big differences between the people that are successful and the people that are not. Successful people create and use habits to increase their success.

They say that it takes 28 days to make something a habit or to change a habit. That means that most of us won’t change things without a very conscious effort.

For example commenting on blogs is a habit for me now. It has become part of my routine and allows me to do it almost with out thinking. (Well it does take thought to comment and add value but I don’t have to think about adding in time to comment on blogs. It is part of my normal routine.)

It does not take a lot of extra effort as I track subjects I am interested in on Google Reader to share quality items with my Friend Feed and Twitter followers. This is something I teach people to do in Twitter Time Saver.

So every morning one of the first things I do is open Google Reader to sort the wheat from the chaff and share the wheat with those that follow me. As a result I am finding lots of quality posts that I want to share and it is quite easy to comment while I am already there.

Habits are easy to create when they help you leverage things. There are probably things you are doing right now that you could add a new habit to to leverage your self.

Other than creating habits using leverage is another key of successful people.

Doing a weekly rant here on Sunday is one of the things that I want to make a habit but it will probably go in fits and starts until I start doing it regularly for a few months. I did the first one a few weeks past and have skipped it since then. See it has not become a part of my routine YET.

Now on another blog I do a Week In Review each week and because it has become a habit for each Saturday that usually Friday night I start putting it together before I end my day. With the exception of an occasional trip and the holidays I do it every week and it has become a routine. After almost three years of writing it it would probably take a conscious decision not to start it when Saturday comes around.

Now one of the reasons I am again publicly stating that I want to start the rants on Sunday here is to put pressure on myself. See telling myself I want to do it and publicly stating something changes the paradigm.

When I tell someone I am going to do something it has a lot more power than telling me. After all it is easy to let your self down or lie to yourself. After all this week I could say that having run to Philly yesterday put me behind so I’ll get to it next week. I almost did just that earlier before making myself sit here and start writing.

After all only I would know then that I let myself down. Now next week it will be harder to make excuses because I have told you that I will be doing this too. Also not doing it this week would be embedding the habit that it is okay to skip it.

So what habit do you need to develop and are you willing to publicly promise it to others? If so leave your comment below and share it with us. If not are you having the success you want? If the answer is no it just may be the habits you are not cultivating that are hurting you.

To continue writing a weekly rant each week