Habit-forming is vital to succeeding in our personal and professional lives and a recent poll conducted by The Human Edge revealed that 87% of respondents (90% of line managers and 84% of employees) believe that effective habit-forming is an undervalued skill within the workplace.
“We are more than half-way through the year, and now is a good time to look back over the last nine months and assess whether you have managed to change your habits to achieve the objectives and goals you set out at the beginning of 2021,” says Helene Vermaak business consultant at The Human Edge.
The past two years have no doubt presented the biggest challenges for most of us and when it comes to changing our habits this may have proven even more difficult as we faced Covid-19 and with it a multitude of distractions, procrastination, motivation and over-extending ourselves. The poll explored what habits are getting in the way of people reaching new levels of personal and professional happiness and success.
The outcome found that the four habits that are holding individuals back the most are: multitasking during virtual meetings, poor stress management, working later than usual and wearing too many hats.
“Many organisations are embracing a hybrid working environment and being able to deal with this new way of working and the responsibilities it brings, is going to present some of our biggest challenges,” says Vermaak.
The study has revealed the five biggest repercussion of ineffective work habits as:
* 31% of participants sighted increased stress levels;
* 21% of participants sighted lower quality of work;
* 17% of participants sighted neglecting responsibility;
* 17% of participants sighted low morale; and
* 14% of participants sighted lower levels of engagement.
Habits control a big part of our lives and studies have shown that people need to believe in their capacity for change and that things will get better to achieve permanent habit change. “We know that support systems can help us build belief that making changes is possible, so it is important to use your support system, whether it be colleagues, friends or family members, to do this,” says Vermaak.
She recommends five steps for people to get their habits back on track and help achieve the goals and changes they set out to achieve at the beginning of 2021:
* Shrink your routine – choose small routines, these are more achievable.
* Find the cues that trigger the behaviours you desire – by controlling your environment you can stop cueing bad behaviour and prepare for bad cues when these surface.
* Make it rewarding – what is rewarded is repeated so make sure that your rewards motivate you. The two forms of rewards are extrinsic, these are the initial tangible regards and then intrinsic, which are the feelings we get that help us maintain our habits.
* Reduce the noise – get rid of the distractions triggering the wrong behaviours that are keeping you from the right ones.
* Fiddle with the gears – look at what you might need to change to help you succeed in embedding the new habit.
In conclusion, Vermaak says that once you have formulated the habits you need to change and applied the above steps, write them out and make a commitment. “Remember the golden rule of habit change is that you can’t extinguish a bad habit, you can only replace it ideally with a habit that is personally more beneficial and rewarding.”