Easy in Theory, Difficult in Practice: How to Change Your Daily Work Habits

A common response to any suggestion that involves changing a habit is often “But it’s so hard to do!” (or one of the many variations of the theme: “I try”, “I wish I could” or “This is one of my biggest challenges”). Translation: it’s easier said than done.

Changing our daily habits is easy in theory only. You would think it would simply be a matter of stopping doing the things you don’t wish to do and doing the things you wish to do, but like many things in life, that’s not the way it works.

Change takes time and changing a habit takes even more time (and a whole lot of dedication). Think back to all those lofty New Year’s resolutions you made and only managed to keep for the first week or two.

How to Change Your Daily Work Habits

Our daily routine is probably the hardest thing to change because it’s something that we do daily. It’s our regular work mode, our default setting or comfort zone. Changing it means thinking about what you are doing and that isn’t easy.

One Week, One Habit – Don’t jump in and try to completely change your entire routine. That approach is doomed to failure. Map out your change goals and work on changing one habit at a time over a week or so. When that new habit is fully integrated, move onto the next in the series.

For example, if your big goal is to be more organized in your work habits, start by getting your desk completely clear and keeping it that way. That means putting away files as you finish that task and allocating time at the end of the day to clear off any clutter. The next in the series may be doing the same for your inbox or your computer desktop.

Make Change Easy – Give yourself every chance of succeeding in changing that habit by making sticking with your change routine easier than falling back into your old habits. That means understanding what makes it so easy to default to that habit in the first place.

Take our clear desk habit, for example. The key to making that habit easy to stick with is by starting out with a perfectly clear desk. Don’t try to stop putting more paper onto of the already looming piles of papers. Designate an hour (or two if it’s really bad) to clear your desk and focus on maintaining it.

Give Yourself Change Cues – Create change cues or reminders to keep yourself focused on changing that habit. It’s likely that you will default back into your old routine without even realizing it so think of it as the visual equivalent of tying a ribbon around your finger.

So for our organized work habits example, you could put a brightly colored note on your screen with the question “Is your desk clear?” to remind yourself to clear your desk. If you have a favorite clutter hotspot on your desk, you could even put a note there that says “Clutter-free zone!”

Reinforce the Benefits – Make a mental note what you enjoy about the newly integrated habit. The idea is to start feeling connected to that habit, like it’s something you can’t function without.

Going back to our organized desk example, notice how much easier it is to find what you are looking for when it’s not buried under a mound of paper and how it makes you feel to work in a nicely organized space.