Has this ever happened to you? You are getting set to wind down a long day of work. You were really busy putting out fires, answering phone calls and finishing up paperwork. Because of this, your day got away from you and you didn’t do anything that you actually wanted to accomplish.
What do you do next? Do you stay late and get some of things accomplished or do you walk away from it and tell yourself that you will get to it tomorrow? This scenario has happened to me more times than I would care to admit. If you have a boss, they may remind you that you came up short and make you stay until your important items are done. If you are an entrepreneur, most likely you are on your own. How do you make sure that you don’t compromise your daily success?
We have talked a lot about planning; when to set up your day, how to do it, how to manage your time. The hardest part to implementing any of this is to break the bad habits that have been developed for days, months, years. It’s so easy to keep doing things the way we have always done it. It just feels natural doesn’t it?
I have heard that it takes 21 days of consistent committed action to break an old habit and another 31 days to create a new one in it’s place. That takes commitment to make that kind of change. It certainly doesn’t happen on accident. Where does that a leave us entrepreneurs with the bad habits? It means that today, we look at what needed to be done and ask ourselves if it got done. If it did. Pat yourself on the back. If it didn’t, start getting it done now and don’t walk away until the mission’s complete.
This is one of the best pieces of advice that I ever got working in corporate America from an old boss. He told me when I walk away from the day and don’t do what I told myself I would do, I tell myself that it’s OK to fail. He was/is right and it lead to me changing my behaviors. This had a huge impact on my productivity and my abilities as a leader as people respected me more because I was less willing to compromise my success or theirs.
How have you been victim to this habit? Have you overcome it or does it still nag at you?