New Habits That Will Accelerate Your Business

The truth is that creating a new habit is not easy but is worth it is worth it in the long run. Good habits are especially needed when we have a business. New habits will accelerate your business growth.

Why Should You Make New Habits

First, I am sure you are wondering why you should create new habits to accelerate your business. After nearly 16 years in business, I can attest to the necessity of change and transition in this entrepreneurial journey. It is not pretty and it isn’t often discussed but I think it is something that needs to be addressed.

While you are transitioning or changing, new habits must be formed to complete it successfully. Accelerating only happens when we have great business habits.

What Is A Habit

You know how I love a good definition. As we dig further into this topic we should understand the meaning of the word habit.

Definition of Habit:

‘habits’ are defined as actions that are triggered automatically in response to contextual cues that have been associated with their performance.”

National Library of Medicine

Influencing Factors To Create New Habits

Several factors can influence your ability to create new habits. I will discuss some of these next.

1. Why – do you want to create this new habit? When I was a smoker (many, many years ago) I came to a place where I wanted to quit smoking. My ‘why’ was that I wanted to have children and be healthier. Remembering my ‘why’ on the difficult days helped me be successful in creating my non-smoking habit.
2. Motivation – is another specific in creating your new habit. If you are not motivated to change you are not going to create the new habit.
3. Positive Mindset – is a need to make your new habit stick. Mindset plays one of the largest roles in creating it. Motivation and why could fall under mindset as it controls these things as well. Keep your positive mindset and it will help with the other factors and will propel you forward in creating new habits.
4. Encouragement – from others is helpful. Encouragement is like having a cheering team on your side.
5. Accountability – having someone do this for you can be the difference between being successful or not in creating your habit.
6. Environment – surrounding yourself with an organized area where you feel good will also benefit your habit-making.
7. Envision a Future – with the new habit. If you can envision a future with your new habit where it is benefitting you this will go a long way to empowering you to conquer your goal.

How Long Does It Take To Create A New Habit

You’ve probably heard it said it takes 21 days to change or create a new habit. This is, however, incorrect. It takes an estimated 10 weeks for your new repeated action to become a habit, according to the National Library of Medicine (see quote). This is approximately two and a half months. Much longer than most people realize.

“Some patients may have heard that habits take 21 days to form. This myth appears to have originated from anecdotal evidence of patients who had received plastic surgery treatment and typically adjusted psychologically to their new appearance within 21 days.²² More relevant research found that automaticity plateaued on average around 66 days after the first daily performance,⁹ although there was considerable variation across participants and behaviours. Therefore, it may be helpful to tell patients to expect habit formation (based on daily repetition) to take around 10 weeks. Our experience is that people are reassured to learn that doing the behaviour gets progressively easier; so they only have to maintain their motivation until the habit forms. Working effortfully on a new behaviour for 2–3 months may be an attractive offer if it has a chance of making the behaviour become ‘second nature’.”

National Library of Medicine

I can remember trying to start a new habit by setting out to do repeated tasks, usually exercising or eating right. Although I went the 21 days the behavior did not become a habit. This was very frustrating to me at the time. Now I understand why it did not work.

Obstacles To Forming New Habits

Obstacles to forming new habits are, as you would guess, the opposite of those things that will help you create them. Things such as a lack of motivation, negative input from others, your mindset, and your inability to see how the habit will help you in the future will impact your ability to create a new habit.

Persevering will also help you overcome obstacles to creating the habit. You must continue with the new habit over and over again until your mind and body can automatically recall it without resistance.

Tammy durden

Habits That Will Accelerate Your Business

What new habits will accelerate your business? Many habits can do this but here are a handful.

1. Start Your Day Right – focused on the work at hand without distractions.
2. Prioritize – your day with the tasks that deserve your peak performance, which is often early in the day.
3. Become Intentionally Unbalanced – In the book: The 12 Week Year the author explains that we cannot live a work/life balance. One will always have more of our attention over the others. Instead, he explains, to strive to live intentionally unbalanced lives.
4. Tasks – knowing which tasks should take priority over others is essential. Learning how to do this and forming habits that help you do this will also help you to succeed.
5. Organization – is a key habit to have in business. Being able to organize is a part of every area of life including business. The ability to organize your files digitally to organize your desktop is a worthy habit. Some of us will say that in our messiness we have order or know exactly where everything is, however, I think if we are honest with ourselves we know that being organized is a much better way to go. I feel very frustrated when I am unorganized.
6. Utilize Productivity Tools – using productive tools such as a project management system, planners, digital calendars, and more are extremely beneficial habits to have for a solopreneur.

I will also add that a Freelancer’s life is filled with many tasks during the day and creating new habits that help our productivity is worthwhile.

Lastly

Creating new habits is not easy. Stay with it, persevere, my friend and you will be surprised at all you can accomplish by setting up good habits to reinforce your business goals.

Until Next Time Here’s To Your Continued Success!

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