BRX Pro Tip: How to Make a Good Habit Stick
Stone Payton: Welcome back to Business RadioX Pro Tips. Lee Kantor and Stone Payton here with you. Lee, let’s talk a little bit about habits and, specifically, how to make a good habit stick.
Lee Kantor: Yeah. I’m a big believer in habits. I think that most of our behavior is kind of habitual. And the trick is to make good habits stick and to make bad habits not stick. And it’s kind of the same methodology for both sides of this equation. So, in order to make a good habit stick, you have to make it easier for yourself to do the new good behavior and you have to make it harder on yourself to do the not so good behavior.
Lee Kantor: An example of this is, like, say you want to lose weight or you want to eat less junk food. What you would do is you would not put M&M’s in a bowl near you, because if you do that, you’re going to just grab the M&M’s throughout the day and you’ve made eating M&M’s too easy on yourself. But if you put fruit in a bowl or grapes in a bowl near you, you would be encouraging yourself to grab a handful of grapes throughout the day. So, that’s what you have to do, is, you have to make it easy for you to do the good behavior and make it difficult to do the bad behavior.
Lee Kantor: So, in business, that might be I want to increase my productivity. So, what I’m going to do is, I’m going to turn my notifications off my phone so every time it bings or buzzes, I’m not grabbing it to see what’s there anytime somebody is trying to email me or text me or some new news thing happened. And I’m also going to take my phone and put it in another room because I want to focus on doing some deep, high impact work. This way, I’m not going to be distracted and I’m not going to be checking my phone because it’s going to be a little bit more difficult to do.
Lee Kantor: Now, I can do it if I want to, but I got to really want to. I got to get up and go across the room to get my phone. But if I want to sit in front of my computer and write a blog post or write an article, then I’m going to sit on my computer. I’m not going to get up. So, make it easy for yourself to do the good behavior and make it just a little difficult to do the not so good behavior. And you’ll see those good habits are going to stick and the bad habits will slowly go away.
