Habits Provide Freedom
Highly productive people are like factor managers. They hire obedient workers aka habits. They take the time and energy to train a habit, so it can execute a task all on its own. This frees up the managers energy to focus on other habits that will serve him.
Eventually the manager can show up to work, head upstairs to his office and watch his obedient habits reliably executing tasks and pumping out work without him needing to motivate them to do any of it. Over the course of several years a manager with well trained habits produces incredible results. Habits provide freedom.
Video By Productivity Game
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Key Takeaways
How To Hire A Habit
Only hire one habit at a time if you train more than one habit at a time, you fail to give each habit the time and attention it needs to become a productive member of your team.
Make sure it’s a habit worth investing in You’ll need patience and motivation so make sure it is a habit worth investing in. One tip is to build habits that you’ll know you will need a year from now as badly as you need today, like the habit of reading books everyday to expand knowledge and expertise.
Make a contract Once you pick a new habit, make a contract with that habit before you start the on boarding process. Researchers found that those who wrote down their intended behavior were 3x more likely to complete their new habit then those who never wrote down an intended behavior at all. The contract will establish 3 things:
1. Explicit Behavior the first step to increase the chances of a habit becoming a productive member of your habit factory is to explicitly state when & where will take action each day.
2. Minimum Daily Quota research shows that failing to execute the habit for one day is not a big deal, it drops the odds by about 5%. But if you fail to execute the habit two days in a row, you’ll reduce the odds of adopting the habit by 55%. Miss more than two days in a row and you’ll reduce your chances of building that habit by 90+%. Your primary goal when boarding a habit is to make sure it doesn’t miss more than 2 days of work in a row.
- Whatever your intended behavior is, scale it way back to a super tiny behavior. It doesn’t matter how much a new habit outputs on any given day. The only thing that maters when on boarding a habit is making sure it shows up each day and becomes automatic.
- You can read more about BJ Foggs Tiny Habits here.
3. Stakes there is an accountability website called Stickk.com, people go to the site to declare their goals and assign a friend to keep them accountable to that goal. They also have the option of putting money the line, that they’ll lose if they don’t reach their goal
On Boarding Phase
The on boarding phase is all about building trust in your new habit. You need to have low expectations for all new habits and only give them more responsibility after they’ve proven to you that they can show up to work day after day and do the bare minimum. If a habit misses a day of work, don’t get upset, just make it a priority the following day to schedule it on your calendar and help it out.
The on boarding phase ends when the habit shows its ability to work without needing your encouragement. According to the latest research, its makes on average 66 days for a habit become automatic. If you invest in a new habit for 66 days, that habit could serve you for a lifetime.
Promotional Phase
Once a habit seems automatic and the on boarding phase is complete, you can slowly promote that habit and allow it to take on more and more responsibility. This involves raising the daily minimum quota a little bit at a time.
When you’re ready to promote a habit, you’re ready to on board the next habit. You’ll eventually get great at on boarding habits and you’ll experience less resistance to adopting vital productive behaviors. If you hire and train the right productive habits, you’ll generate incredible results over several years somewhat effortlessly.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence is not an act, but a habit.” -Aristotle