Hey...what the heck just happened?

As humans we LOVE to set certain aspects of our lives into auto-pilot, also known as routines. We are naturally creatures of habit. We go to sleep at a certain time. We wake up at a certain time. We eat at a certain time. Heck, we sometimes eat certain foods on certain days…Taco Tuesday, I’m definitely looking at you.

Why are we like this. It’s suggested that routines and habits make us feel smart. We like predictability. So we stick with them holding onto the faith that our routines will continue to serve us.

So then why do things sometimes go terribly wrong? One day we have a healthy routine of nutrition and the next day we are a few pounds overweight. We brush our teeth everyday but then we find out we have a cavity. Our energy bill went up…because we saw a bump in our electric usage.

These situations often leave us scratching our heads - how could our perfectly planned day just stop working? There must be a conspiracy. I mean, the hole in this triangle clearly is just some kind of black magic…

I have news for you - more than likely it’s a phenomenon known as “normalization of deviation.” In other words somewhere along the line we actually made a subtle change to our routine. Something so small we would never even acknowledge it’s impact. And these small changes compound over time and eventually you notice when the small changes compound into a big change.

Gained a few pounds? Extra piece of bread at dinner, I’m looking at you.

Got a cavity? It’s probably the Halloween candy you’ve got stashed from your kids.

But what about that energy bill? Maybe we decided it needed to be 1 degree cooler in the house…

Oh, and that triangle…its very subtle but the slope of the longest edge changed ever so slightly. You’d never even question it…except for the hole in the middle of it!

This doesn't just apply to our personal life. It can happen in business. Sometimes a product or service we offer suddenly drops off in sales. Or maybe we are getting more complaints about our work out of nowhere. What if we are putting in the same hours but production drops?

If you’re experiencing any of this in business or in life, I suggest taking a step back and re-evaluating. Here a a few things you can do:

??Acknowledge the change: don’t brush the change under the rug and move on. Understand it so that it does not happen again.

??Document: write down your plan. Make it something that can be easily referenced. Remember we talked about acknowledging change…put that acknowledgement into the notes as well!

??Incorporate Visuals: pictures are worth a thousand words. Whether it’s a process map for work, or just the way you lay out your pantry. Allowing our eyes to help us do the work creates compounding returns.

??Move forward: ok, so your perfect plan got tripped up. Good news, it happens all the time. Literally. To Every. Single. Human. Ever. Now that you’ve taken the steps to learn and grow from it its time to get back on track.

I want to know - what has tripped you up before?

Talk soon ??

Ajay

PS - I've got a really great Masterclass coming up where I'll teach you some cool stuff you can do with Excel. Go ahead and register for my?Learn Excel Masterclass ?? it starts in just 4 hours!