Everyone has their own habits. These habits likely bleed over from your personal life to your professional life. However, if these habits don’t necessarily help you to be a more productive and efficient employee, they could be causing irreparable damage to your career. Whether this habit is regarding coming to work hung over or spending too much time checking on your social media accounts during work hours, there are things you can do to stop these bad habits and replace them with things that will be beneficial to your professional life. To show you how, here are three tips for replacing bad work habits with better work habits.
Find The Purpose Of Your Bad Habit
All habits serve some type of purpose. In all cases, that purpose can either be helpful or hurtful. The trick to stopping and starting habits is to find out what the purpose of the habit is and replacing it with something healthier that can fulfill that same purpose. Marie Hartwell-Walker, a contributor to PsychCentral.com, shares that the habit of taking a break from your stressful workday might present itself as spending too much time on social media. To still fulfill the purpose of taking a much needed break, find a new way to fulfill this purpose, like taking a brisk walk around the office. Once you’re able to determine what purpose your bad habit serves, you’ll be able to think of better, more constructive ways to meet your needs.
Make A Plan For Your Replacement Habit
After you’ve pinpointed what your bad habit is and why it’s manifesting itself, it’s now time to figure out how to replace that habit with a better habit. However, you often can’t just wing this step. In order for the replacement of habits to be successful, you must have a detailed plan. Marlen Komar, a contributor to Bustle.com, recommends creating a list of things you can do instead of resulting to your former bad habit. Try to think of things that will seamlessly fit into your professional life. While this will be a difficult task, simply thinking about your actions beforehand will aid you in making your new good habits stick.
Be Constantly Committed To Change
There will be days at work where you’ll want to revert back to your old bad habits. The stress will mount, someone will get on your nerves, and you’ll forget that you’ve made the decision to give up this habit for the sake of your career. However, to achieve the goal of replacing your bad habits, you have to always be committed to staying true to your change. Jeff Olson, a contributor to Entrepreneur.com, recommends sticking to these changes even when you’re not at work or when no one else is around. Make the commitment you’ve made to yourself be strong enough to keep you on the path toward overcoming your bad habit.
If you have bad work habits that you know you need to address, use the tips mentioned above to turn these bad habits into good ones.
