7 Habits That… Blah Blah Blah

Stop reading ‘habit’ clickbait — Develop real habits to help with your productivity

How many times have you clicked on a headline like the following:

Powerful Habits That will…, Best Habits to …, Habits of Successful…, Easy Habits to…?

If you’re like most people you do it for one or both of the following reasons:

• You are just curious as to how some people think or how a group of people conduct their lives or become successful.
• You want to replicate behavior so that you can also be successful.

If you’re just curious, go ahead and read the habit article if you have the time.

If you’re thinking that you can replicate success by copying habits you may be disappointed to find that the habits don’t ‘stick’. If you want to find out why they don’t work for you, and why you should develop your very own habits, maybe you will want to hear what I have found from my own experience.

Habits are easier to understand if you realize a simple fact: habits are just things you do over and over again while implementing your plans.

We’re not talking about trivial habits here, like biting your nails. This article is concerned with lifestyle habits like taking care of your personal finances once a week or doing one hour of math every day.

If you want to develop some solid habits then try the following:

First, identify your passion or necessity, then set a goal that will fulfill that passion or necessity. Make plans to implement that goal. Then, the habits to achieve your goals will arise spontaneously out of necessity while you are working on your plans. The unglamorous fact is that habits are just things you do while implementing your plans. Habits need to be sufficiently predicated.

If the habit is just a vanity project you will get tired of it. There needs to be a plan that the habit is meant to help you implement, and the habit must definitively help you implement that plan. There are no magic habits that you can copy verbatim that is guaranteed to work for you.

Here’s how true habits originate organically:

Passion (or necessity) -> goals -> plans -> habits

Here’s how copied and pasted habits originate:

Passion (or necessity) -> habits -> goals? -> plans?

Here’s how vanity habits originate:

Habits -> passion (or necessity)? -> goals? -> plans?

You can graft other people’s habits into your life if you want. But if you copy someone else’s habits you will implement their plans, not yours. If you need to copy someone else’s habits it means your goals and plans are not clearly defined. Your habits should develop organically when you start implementing your plans.

Your habits will be refined by the problems and reality of implementing your plans.

Habits need a reward. The bigger the reward the more entrenched the habit becomes.

The strength of your passion (or how badly you need something) will determine how long your successful habits last.

Habits are developed over time by trial and error and have to be constantly changed to suit your mood, situation, and changing plans.

Example of an Organic Habit

After working many years for no passion bosses you develop a passion to become independent and make a lot of money. So, you set a goal to start your own business. You start to plan how to do this. You spend time finding out how to register a company, open a bank account and pay taxes. You come up with a business plan and decide you want to open an online business. You don’t have money to hire a programmer to make your website so you plan to teach yourself. Your passion, goal, and plans are well defined.

In order to learn to program, you must do online courses and program every day. You develop a habit of coding at least three hours per day else you forget what you learned. When you get some users on your website, you have to answer support questions, so you do this every morning before coding. You have to make sure you have enough money in your bank account to pay for online services so you do this for ten minutes per day. Your habits are developing out of necessity while you are implementing your plans. Your progress is measurable because your habits are helping you implement your plans. Your habits are reinforced.

Example of a Copy Pasted Habit

After working many years for no passion bosses you develop a passion to become independent and make a lot of money. You find an article online that tells you that it is the habit of highly successful people to read every day. So you buy books and read every day so that you can broaden your general knowledge just like successful people.

Here your passion is well defined. After reading for a month you find yourself questioning why you are doing it. What are you doing it for? Your goal is not defined. The habit does not help you implement any plan, so you cannot measure progress. You soon give up.

Example of a Vanity Habit

You find an article online that tells you that it is the habit of highly successful people to read every day. So you buy books and read every day so that you can broaden your general knowledge just like successful people.

You have no passion to be successful because you are very happy in your job, and can’t be bothered with climbing the corporate ladder. You have no goals and you don’t like reading. The habit does not help you implement any plan, so you cannot measure progress. There is no passion or goal to sustain your habit. After reading for a week you give up.

The Best Habit

What about the habit articles? Can they help? You need to understand the motivation for these articles. They are more for entertainment value. They are not going to help you reach your goals and implement your plans. They are too generic and fluffy. You might find some entertainment or inspiration in them, but ultimately you have to develop your own habits.

So how do you find articles online that will help you? Instead of habit articles, what you actually need to look for instead, are articles that help you implement your plans. Articles with titles like “Steps to…” or “Instructions for..” or “Directions to…” or “How to…”. Make a habit of reading articles that help you implement your plans!

I hope this helps you and I wish you all the best with your new habit!

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