Productivity

  • 5 Ways to Rewire a Bad Habit to a Good One

    Back in 2005 before starting my Marketing Firm I owned a professional organizing business. During my work in this industry I saw a lot of people struggling to get their personal and professional life organized. These people were young, old and in between. Many were professionals but some were retired or stay at home parents. So, you can see everyone can fall into having bad habits no matter where they are in life. I’m not a fan of the word bad but when it comes to this topic, I’d rather not sugar coat it.

    Basically, being disorganized is just a series of bad habits or routines that need to be rewired into good habits. We all have bad habits; it’s a fact of life because we’re human and imperfect. The good news is that bad habits can be changed with some discipline and work. Yes, I said it. It takes effort to make changes and rewire our brains into doing things differently. Changing bad habits doesn’t happen overnight but simply acknowledging them is the first step towards change along with making up your mind to do so.

    Messy Computer

    So, what are some bad habits? Here are a few examples.

    • Not creating a plan of action for the work that needs to be done
    • Setting lofty goals and timelines that are unrealistic
    • Overeating or eating the wrong types of food
    • Letting your inbox get full and out of control
    • Not practicing self-care
    • Lacking organization in the space you live or work in
    • Not getting back to people who call or email you in a timely fashion

    Maybe you recognize some these or have other bad habits that need to be tamed but how do we go about doing that?

    One quick tip: Don’t try to change multiple bad habits at once. Choose one behavior or area to focus on and work on that first. When you feel that bad habit has been changed for good, work on changing another – or work on incorporating good habits into your daily life.

    Here are some tips for creating good habits.

    1. Keep the temptation out of sight. If you have a problem with overeating junk food, for example, keep those tempting foods out of your home. Avoid those aisles at the grocery store. Step away from the snack table when you’re a guest at someone’s house. If your temptation isn’t visible, then you’ll get used to not having that temptation in your life, which forms a good habit of not overindulging.

    2. Reward yourself (positive reinforcement). If you want to be get organized, schedule an activity they you love doing like a day at the spa or whatever is your thing for about 6-8 weeks out as a reward, provided you stay true to your organizing goals you will have a wonderful reward to look forward to. Now use this reward, to stay focused on the goal of organizing your life/spaces that you live or work in. Also consider rewarding yourself for incorporating a good habit into your life as well and choose small, simple rewards that fit your budget.

    Money Jar

    3. Give yourself a consequence for the bad habit (negative reinforcement). If you have a habit of not getting back to people in a timely fashion, try charging yourself a fee for every time you forget. Keeping in mind, that it’s costing you way more in revenue because this habit can be making you lose clients and opportunities. Collect that money in a jar so you can see it as a reminder that you need to get better at that task. We all get into ruts and routines that we need to take charge of and not let them take charge of us. When you haven’t contributed to the jar in a month’s time, take that money and give yourself a reward. Tell your team members at work, your friends and family, too, so they can help keep you accountable. Sometimes we’re so used to doing bad habits that we don’t even notice when it happens. Giving yourself a consequence forces you to be more aware of your behavior and eventually eliminates that bad behavior.

    4. Track your daily habits. Whether you choose good old paper and pen or a sophisticated app on your phone, tracking your habits puts them in the forefront of your mind and you’ll also feel accomplished at the end of the day. For instance, if you’re exercising daily, mark down what you did and for how long. If you’re stopping your procrastination, mark what time you started work. If you’re unplugging more from something like social media, use a calendar to jot down when you turned your app off and how long that lasted. Visual cues that you’re succeeding in busting these bad habits can go a long way to make you feel proud and accomplished, which will positively reinforce this new behavior.

    5. Ask for an accountability partner. Do you have a mentor, business coach or friend who can help monitor your success? Do you have a nutritionist who can help create healthy meals? Do you have a business partner or friend who you help turn your business struggles around? Or do you feel comfortable posting certain struggles or challenges on social media, so your followers then become your accountability partners? Keeping your struggles and goals to yourself often makes it easier to cheat; however, if you tell other people what you’re trying to accomplish, then you’ll focus more on the new behavior, which eventually will overtake the bad behavior.

    I hope you found these ideas helpful. Again, remember that rewiring your brain and changing daily routines takes time so be kind to yourself. Best to you and your endeavors.

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  • Systemizing Your Business for Success

    When you look at a successful entrepreneur or business owner do you ever wonder how they manage to get it all done?

    The answer is they have systems in place.

    It’s true. The most productive people all have one thing in common: they don’t reinvent the wheel every day. Instead, they’ve figured out the best, most efficient way to do every task, and they create a system to do just that.

    No matter what business you’re in and what projects you find yourself tackling, a systemized approach will help you:

    • Work faster and produce more
    • Produce higher quality results with fewer mistakes
    • Easily outsource the tasks you don’t like to do

    The Magic of Templates

    How many times do you answer email from potential clients? What about responding to customer concerns?

    These tasks and become more effortless when you create fill-in-the-blank templates that can be re-purposed for specific cases/people. Templates can be as simple as a “canned response” in your email client or help desk, or you can use software such as Text Expander (for Mac) or Phrase Express (for Windows). You might even create a template document in Dropbox or Google Drive to house all your templates for easier access for you and your support staff.

    While templates will undoubtedly save you time, the real beauty is that once they’re created, you can easily outsource things like email and even sales. Simply instruct your assistant on the proper use of your templates, and you’ll be free to do other, more important things.

    Checklists Prevent Mistakes

    Planning

    It might seem counterintuitive, but when you perform the same tasks repeatedly, it’s easy to miss a critical step. You might think you paid your bills this month—you might even remember doing it—only to look back and see it was never completed.

    But when you implement checklists, it’s suddenly much more difficult to miss an important task.

    You can easily create checklists for all your common tasks and projects using nothing more than a text document. If you’re managing a team, checklists in your project management system allow you to see exactly what tasks are complete, and which are still outstanding.

    Templates and checklists turn smart business owners into productivity superstars, and it’s easy to get started. The next time you answer an email you’ve answered before, save your response. The next time you set up a new product in your shopping cart or create a new opt-in page, take the time to record the steps. These documents will make future projects easier and faster to complete, and best of all, you can hand them off to your assistant to do instead.

    And if you’re techie, make a video tutorial and show the steps with an over-the-shoulder training.

    Automated Follow-Ups Make the Next Step a

    No-Brainer for Systemizing

    As any smart business owner knows, the key to passive income is a well-established (and full) funnel.

    So of course, you’ve optimized your opt-in pages and monetized your download pages and have encouraged more buyers through well-placed upsells and down sells.

    But what about the follow-up? Do you contact customers about the products or services they didn’t buy? Do you encourage them to use the products they have purchased? Are you making sure they know about all your other wonderful programs?

    If not, you’re missing the boat. But the good news is, this can be easily managed with just a bit of simple automation, and when done right, it will smoothly lead your customers from one purchase to the next, at the exact right time for them to take advantage of your best offers.

    Segment Your Audience in Your Email

    to Save Time

    Many autoresponder services allow you to target emails based on reader action. Want to send a follow up email to those who clicked a specific link? Create a segment and mail away. Want to re-engage with those who haven’t opened your emails in a while? Easy to do, and you can potentially recover subscribers who have gone missing. Of course, you need a more sophisticated email service like Constant Contact.

    http://www.constantcontact.com/signup.jsp?pn=strategizeyoursuccess

    These tactics require that you know your audience and your products exceptionally well. Study your stats. Know your open and click rates. Pay attention to the promotions that work, as well as those that fall flat. With information in hand, you’ll be better able to effectively segment your lists and make the most of all the parts of your funnel. Knowing your audience takes the guess work and time out of mailing to those who have no interest in specific products, services or events.

    Segmenting your list in the long run will save you time and produce higher quality prospects for your business. The more hands-off you can make your systems the more time you will have to do the higher-level work that makes your business more money.

    Making small changes in your business can yield big returns. Systemizing as much as you can like other successful entrepreneurs will help you be more productive and make less mistakes.

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