Establish Habits

***********************************************************************

“Habit is a cable; we weave a thread of it each day, and at last we cannot break it.”

                                                        – Horace Mann

*************************************************************************

We all know people with impeccable habits. These enviable folks write each day, exercise each morning and never lose their keys, because they put them in exactly the same place each time they enter their home.

I’m envious, aren’t you?

While we may never be as disciplined as the people who were born to be organized, we can certainly improve our self-discipline and create daily habits of orderliness.

How should we develop new systems and behaviors? With gradual, small efforts and patience.

Here are some guidelines for developing habits:

1) Be Patient – Understand that cultivating a new routine will take time. Research shows that new habits take at least 21 days to form. When trying to implement a new system or behavior, make a chart to keep track of your actions, and wait at least three weeks before you consider your habit established.

2) Start small – Don’t try to change multiple behaviors at once. Pick one positive habit you’d like to develop. Some people launch an enthusiastic make-over plan and decide to begin writing first thing every morning, catch up on a year’s worth of academic journal reading, start a rigorous exercise program and implement a new office filing system. All at once. This is one reason that New Year’s Resolutions tend to unravel a few weeks into January. Instead of trying to change everything simultaneously, pick one area of focus.

3) Be Concrete - Choose something tangible and measurable to change. It is difficult to assess whether you’ve met vague goals. For example, instead of deciding to “stay current in my field of research”, try to “read one new research article a week.” Be as specific as possible. Instead of deciding to “write every day,” try to “write first thing in the morning for 30 minutes.”

These three tips are just the beginning of implementing new habits. Developing desired behaviors is such an important component of becoming a successful academic that I will devote next week’s Monday Motivator to the same topic.

By the way, the habit I’ve established is writing for a half hour first thing each weekday morning. It is surprising how much you can accomplish over time with a daily half hour.

Which habit will you develop?

Comments

[Ashley]

I think something else that is important is to realize that if you "break" that habit you shouldn't give up. There's many people, myself included, that do this. For example, someone decides to exercise every day and eventually misses a day. They often give up.

[academic coach]

Yes, yes, yes. It is like dieting too. Just because you blow it at one meal doesn't mean that you then eat the whole bag of cookies.

[Rachelle]

I also write each morning and find it really reduces my stress levels. I know that I am able to produce quite a bit in these short bursts, and doing it regularly means that I don't have to spend time figuring out where I left off. Actually, I find it difficult to stop sometimes, even though I have to go to work. I like to keep a little notebook where I jot down what I'll do the next morning, and I can usually pick up where I left off.

Some of my colleagues know about this morning writing, and they often say things like "I wish I could be self-disciplined too." But I don't find it useful to think of self-discipline as something one HAS (a trait), I think of it as something one DOES, every day, over and over again. So changing it is, as the article points out, a matter of doing the thing and developing a new habit.