Building Business Habits

Understanding what habits to have is one thing, but using them consistently is a completely different beast.

But don’t fret too much, I am here to help you build business habits into your daily routines so that you can be more efficient with your work (aka more time for you).

In this article, we will review how to use 12 essential habits using a power hour and time management. These 3 specific strategies are your pathway to consistency and success in your business.

So let’s dive in…

How to Create Habits

To review, habits are the automated behaviors that we use daily without much thought. They can be helpful like brushing your teeth every morning or they might even be harmful in that they detract from moving forward in the way you would like (i.e. watching tv instead of working out or clearing). 

But the thing to remember as we move forward, is that there is a balance. Not every time you sit down to watch TV is bad. You need time for rest and productivity, not just one or the other. See this article on balancing productivity and rest to learn more.

Habits are created by repeating behaviors until they become automatic. When we have done something enough times, it doesn’t use as much brain power to complete the task anymore and as such becomes a habit. These habits build upon each other (see: habit stacking) to create routines that are easy to use. When we have these habits and routines, we have strong synapses in our brain that are making it less time consuming and energy consuming to reach the information we need most often. 

These strong synapses are hard to break once they have been created, which is why habits you no longer want can be very difficult to get rid of.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habit, shares 4 different ways to create (or break a habit).

1. Make it Easy
2. Make it Attractive
3. Make it Obvious
4. Make it Satisfying

I recommend you read the entire book as it is really good to get the stories and implement each type as you go; but for a brief synopsis: he ultimately says to focus less on the habit and more on the action.

In other words, you want to start small and build up over time versus going all in and expecting that starting at 100% will help you sustain 100% forever. 

We have to start small and choose the simplest version of our goal habit. For instance, if you want to lift more weights, put them in front of the remote so that they are obvious when you go to watch TV. Lift a single small weight while you watch TV for 2 minutes and tell yourself that you can put it down after that. 

You have now made lifting weights easy, attractive, obvious, and satisfying by just moving where your weights are and making reaching the remote a little less easy, attractive, obvious, and satisfying. As such, to break a habit you make the action less of these 4 items and to make a habit you add more.

Once you have done this action a few times, you can incrementally increase how long and how hard you train, but the point is that you are doing the thing!

Building Business Habits

In your business, habits work the same way. And those habits lead to routines and systems that support better efficiency. 

Business Habits are the starting point to setting up your day, or triggering when the work is set to begin (or end). You can incorporate several different habits at once, but remember to start small.

In the next section, we will discuss 3 different ways to implement 12 essential business habits.

12 Business Habits to Have:

1. Setting Daily Goals
2. Connection
3. Journaling
4. Gratitude
5. System Check-Ins
6. Planning Time
7. Positive Movement
8. High Value Tasking
9. Break Times
10. Sleep
11. Read
12. Work Within Your Productivity Profile

Note that these habits may not be daily, they may be weekly or even monthly. The hope is that you can create a specific habit that you know you have to complete at a consistent amount of time, even if you don’t look at it every day.

Power Hour

Creating a Power Hour during your day can really set you up for success in your business. This might be first thing in the morning or the hour before you leave for the day. 

By indicating that you have one hour that is just for setting yourself up (even if it's not technically a full hour), you are deciding that part of your identity is being a CEO and organized. One essential piece to creating a habit and having it become a long standing one, is to attach your identity to the habit itself. If you want to be more organized, you have to start identifying as an organized person.

Practice who you want to be and you will become her. 

During this Power Hour, you can set your goals, practice gratitude, check-in on your daily or weekly tasks, schedule your breaks, prioritize, or even get some positive movement in. Choose whatever is going to make you the most successful business woman you can be. 

You may want to start your Power Hour in 5 minute sections and have a clear trigger that signals to your brain that you are going to dedicate time to the set up now. Get really clear on what you can realistically get done during this time, and focus in on one habit at at at time.

Once you have your first habit down in that first 5 minutes, then you can add another and another, until you have your one hour routine set. 

My example of a Power Hour has even adapted to my circumstances over the years. I started off doing them the night before so that I knew exactly what I was doing the next day and never had to really fight the executive functioning come morning. 

My Power Hour Includes:

• 3 things I was grateful for that day
• 1 thing I was looking forward to in the following day
• My top 3 priorities for the following day
• Checking in on my weekly to do list
• Making sure that I had organized all my documents so that I could find things easily the next day
• Writing down ideas in my swipe file
• Creating a time block schedule (so I knew I wasn’t overworking myself)
• A quick reflection on what worked and didn’t work for that day as well as how I planned to improve the following day.

As you can see, this Power Hour has the potential to incorporate a lot of habit stacking inside. It can easily work in the evening, in the morning, or even to close out your work day. You may even just have 30 minutes to plan your day and then jump right in or have 15 minutes each day and one hour on Fridays to wrap up the week and set up for the next or check in on your systems.

Remember that your business is as unique as you. You will have to adapt anything you hear on the internet or Instagram or Pinterest to your individual needs. If you would like help with this, let me know and we can chat!

Time Management 

We have talked about time-management before on the blog. But it is worth mentioning again. Habits are going to help you with time management and time management can help you with habits.

The thing about habits is making time for them. Yes, habits are going to make you more efficient, but as we start to develop them, we need to be more intentional about making time so they can flourish. 

This is where the Productivity Profile works both as a habit and as a time-management strategy. The overlap can sometimes be confusing; but if you take one thing away from anything I say about time-management, let it be this: your Productivity Profile is the way to success.

You have to first learn how you work best and your ebbs and flows in both business and your personal life (especially for those with a 28 day cycle).

We have to figure out what times are best to work on what items so that we can be more efficient and we can have more brain capacity to add other things in.

If you would like to learn about your Productivity Profile, check out the Time Management Workbook for Busy Entrepreneurs to get you started.

Wrap Up

Habits can be tricky, especially trying to be consistent. 

If you are still unsure or need more support, you know that I won't let you down. The Habit Building Masterclass is a quick way to set up your own habits for success AND it comes with my Habit Journal to keep track. 

And don’t miss our other articles on building a balanced business. You can sign up for our Jewels of Teaching Newsletter to be alerted (and receive my top 5 tips for improving your business with each month's theme).