Episode 61: What are The Habits That Help You and Which Ones Hinder Your Productivity and Progress?

In the first quick tip episode of 2021, Fiona shares what she does during a coaching session with clients - listing down which habits help you and which ones hinder your productivity and progress. Listen today as she talks about making real changes this year.

Topics discussed in this episode: 

• Introduction

• Goal setting with clients

• Listing down good and bad habits

• Making real changes this 2021

• Conclusion
  

Episode transcript: 

Hello, welcome to 2021. This is my very first podcast of the New Year. Happy New Year.

Let's hope that 2021 is a far less challenging and stressful and overwhelming year than the one before it. Well done for getting through 2020, everyone. That is me clapping for you. What a crazy, interesting, challenging, unearthing, uncovering year that we've gone through. I really hope that we can learn from everything that 2020 has taught us. So, yes, I hope wherever you are in the world, wherever you are listening to this, you are safe, you are healthy, and the people that you love are safe and healthy as well, and that you're starting off just a fantastic new year.

So part of helping you start that off. My podcast in particular, my tip episodes -  they are quick tip episodes that are going to help you start or scale your small business without the stress.

So today's episode is a tip. It's also a tactic, I guess, but it's yeah, it's a tip that is going to help you set yourself up to create 2021 as one of the best years in your business and hopefully in your life as well. So let's get stuck into today's tip episode and find out what I'm talking about.

So I do a lot of kind of planning and goal setting and goal getting with my clients. I believe that it's really fun and easy to set goals. It's quite another thing to get them. But one of the things that we talk about when we're planning out their business strategy or planning out kind of tactics or even just looking at the year at a glance to see where the potential obstacles or bottlenecks and where might they have more time to take on, you know, X, Y, Z in their business.

But one of the things that we talk about when we're discussing all of that is habits. So habits are those things that really are going to help you in your business. But they can also hinder you if you're not even aware of potentially negative habits that you have, such as, you know, spiraling down a comparison trap or scrolling social media for a long time or even things like, you know, waking up and checking your email first thing. So I think it was Ashton Kutcher who said, you know, emails are other people's to do list landing in your lap.

And, you know, that can be a habit that a lot of people will have where they leave their phone next to the bed, they wake up. The first thing they do is check emails. And suddenly they've gone from, you know, this relaxed state into stress. And also they've gone from this state where they were in control of what was being consumed by them into, oh, my gosh, now I'm trying to deal with, you know, putting out fires all day.

So the tool that I wanted to think you to think about today or the tip or the tactic is to consider the helpful habits that you have, the habits that you have cultivated through whatever reasons that are really helping you and your life and in your business and then the habits that you have that are hindering you so that those could be things like procrastinating on sending off an email to somebody that, you know, will really help you with your business.

It could be things like procrastinating on just, you know, reconciling stuff in zero or procrastinating on hiring a bookkeeper to help you.

It could be things like scrolling social media as a distraction tool when you've got these kind of tedious elements of your business to kick on with. It could be things like keeping staff on that just aren't doing their job properly because you're too afraid of confronting them or having kind of those awkward conversations that sometimes just need to be had.

So in today's tip, tool or tactic episode, I really wanted you to think about what are the habits that I have just in general, the habits.

And the first thing you can do is literally just get a pen and paper and just write these all down. What are my habits? What are the things that I do? If you're like, well, I'm kind of stuck into how to even start this, just think of an average day in your life, if you can, or pick two days out of the week and just write down what you do, start to finish, then start thinking about, OK, are these you can get, you know, two different colored highlighters or you could just write a circle, you know, helpful hindering and start thinking about is this habit helping me?

And we're at this start of a new year. It's when people are really planning out. What do they want to do differently this year? How are things going to, you know, be improved in their personal and professional lives? And habits are a huge part of that. I mean, we can set the prettiest plan. We can make it all look good and have these beautiful vision boards and picture, you know, word for the year. But if we don't have habits, so many of those things just fall through the cracks by the time we get to mid-February.

So if you want to make real change this year, it has to somehow connect with your habits. And one way you can do that is literally start thinking about one of my habits and then what is helpful and what is hindering and with the ones that are hindering. It's not like you're going to just suddenly get rid of them overnight. But being really conscious and aware of what you're doing and even saying it out loud to yourself. So I do that sometimes with things like if I'm on social media.

I know that I'm just distracting myself from actually getting work done. I will literally out loud say, "Fiona, you're distracting yourself right now. Get off Instagram" and I'll turn my phone off. Then this other more practical steps. So I've done things like put a timer on my apps for social media so I only have a 30 minute max per day that I'm on them.

And that's actually been incredible to see because some days that will pop up at, say, you know, 9am and other days it'll be 10:00, 11:00 at night or not even eleven o'clock.

I'm never awake at eleven o'clock, ten o'clock. And so I'm starting to really say, "oh, OK, you know, gosh, I didn't even spend half an hour today." And so I think small things add up. But the starts with all of this, you know, change starts with being aware of what we're doing and being conscious of the habits that help us and the habits that hinder us.

So that is the Quick tip episode for today, really get thinking about, you know, helpful and your habits that are hindering you.

If you want help with this, there is a free download on this episode's show notes. So you just need to go to mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcast/61, episode 61. Now, if this is the first time you're listening to this. Welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you so much for joining me. Definitely go back and binge on past episodes, but also make sure you hit subscribe so you don't miss out on these quick Tip episodes as well as my longer coaching ones and the interviews that I conduct with incredible small business owners across the globe.

Well, that's it for me. Thanks so much for listening. Happy New Year and see you next time.

Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.