Habits - Career Maker or Breaker - Part 1

What is the first thing you do after you wake up? Use the rest room? Pray? Check messages on your phone?

Chances are you do one of these things.

Chances are you don’t know exactly when you started the routine or why it made sense to do it that way. You only know this is your life now. You’ve formed your habits.

So, why are habits important?

Habits help us manage our minds. Habits save us brain power – or rather free up our brains to do exciting creative thinking. This automatic response requires less creativity and complexity of thinking from us.

What does that have to do with our careers? Well, it’s because of how habits work.

Every habit starts with a belief. What you believe eventually plays out in your actions.

Charles Duhigg, the author of the bestselling book, the Power of Habit, described the “Habit Loop” as a representation of how our habits work.

The loop starts with a cue or a trigger like

·????????Time

·????????Location

·????????Events

·????????Emotional state

·????????Other people

It’s the reason some people overeat when they’re stressed, crack their knuckles when they are nervous, say “like” and “as in” to fill up pauses and wake up at the same time every day, even when they go to bed late.

When our brain recognizes the trigger, it switches to auto-pilot mode and starts performing the routine tasks. The same tasks, which we perform every-time we are in such a scenario.

Performing the routine, gives us some kind of satisfaction or reward, which is the outcome or result of following the routine.

The thing is, this happens whether the habit is a GOOD habit or a BAD habit.

At different stages in your career, you may exhibit some behaviors that can make a either a positive or negative impact on your career, based on your mindset.

Good Mindsets like “I can always be better” “Whatever I don’t know, I can learn” “My word is my bond”.

… show up in your daily routine in activities like reading a book, developing your skills by taking courses and keeping your promises.

Bad Mindsets like “It’s too hard to get a job”, “My organization is bad”, “What if I fail?”

…show up in your daily routine as applying for jobs but not expecting to be called, seeing only the negative in your workplace and being afraid to take a chance on yourself.

What then are those career making habits?

1.??????Be punctual and professional.

2.??????Respect and achieve deadlines.

3.??????Proactively learn skills.

4.??????Anticipate needs.

5.??????Take initiative on projects.

6.??????Ask smart questions.

7.??????Admit mistakes

8.??????Communicate effectively.

9. Celebrating achievements, both yours and those of others

If habits have become a part of us, how then can we change a bad habit?

We will be talking about that next week!

To learn more about habits and how they are formed, I highly recommend the book, “The Power of Habit” by Charles Duhigg.

You can find more career tips, lessons and stories on The Talent Guide Career Blog at [email protected]