Creating habits for success

Four Strategies for Staying On-Track

By Michelle LaBrosse, CCPM, PMP®, PMI-ACP, Chief Cheetah and Founder of Cheetah Learning

What habits do you need to develop to become a more effective Project Manager? Maybe you need to get more organised with your paperwork, or change how you spend your time each day to stay on-track with your projects, or shift how you respond to stressful situations. Regardless of the kind of habit you’re trying to form, you might find that changing your day-to-day behaviour is more challenging that you expected. It may be the case that you’ve tried before to adopt this new habit, but somehow got derailed from your goal. For this month’s Know How Network, we’ll be discussing the best recent research on habits: what it takes to form a new habit, and what to do if you find yourself straying from your planned course of action.

Keep these strategies in mind when working to develop a new habit:

Don’t despair if you mess up once or twice. Especially when the habits we’re trying to adopt are challenging, it is unrealistic to think that once we’ve committed to adopting them, we’ll practice them every day without fail. Research shows that missing a day does not, in fact, have a significant impact on your ability to adopt a new habit. The crucial thing is to recover from the slip-up – fast. Missing one day is acceptable, but stretching this into five days will likely hurt your ability to make your new habit part of your automatic daily activity. Leave slip-ups in the past, and focus instead on what you have to gain by sticking with your goal of developing a new habit.

Be patient if the new habit still feels like a chore, even months later. Psychologist Jeremy Dean conducted original research on what it takes to make new habits and break old ones, and found that to do either almost always takes longer than the commonly-held perception of 21 days. Getting to the point where practicing a new habit (or losing an old one) feels automatic, he found, takes an average of 66 days. While adopting a simpler habit (like drinking water every day) may take less time, more complex or challenging habits (he gives the example of doing 50 sit-ups each morning) will likely take 80 or more days before they feel automatic.

Tell others about your new habit. This is also called “accountability.” For the purpose of creating a new habit, though, it’s not necessary to have a partner or group that really holds you accountable; what matters is that other people know about the habit you’re trying to develop, and will know if you break it. Just being aware that others will know if you don’t keep up with your habit is sufficient motivation for many people to stick with their goals.

Finally, celebrate small victories. Beating yourself up for missing a day or two in the practice of your new habit is more likely to be more de-motivating than it is to be motivating. A better strategy is to keep track of how many days you’ve successfully carried out your new daily habit and reflect on what you’ve gained by adopting this habit. If the gains from adopting your new habit are less immediate (as in a diet), you can further motivate yourself to stick with your habit by setting up intermittent rewards for yourself – so long as you choose a reward that doesn’t break the habit! Over time, as your habit becomes a more automatic part of your daily activity, the rewards become less necessary.

Following these tips will significantly increase the likelihood that you’ll successfully adopt your new habit to become a more effective Project Manager. And, as with all important projects, the best time to start is NOW.

 

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