We last spoke about when training sessions work and when they don’t. I ended “When Made to Stick Will” with three questions you could talk story about, either here with me and the rest of the Say “Alaka‘i” community, or in your own workplace. Two of those questions had the word ‘habit’ in them:

• What simple practices can help you make something stick in your habit-building?
• If your manager offered to give you some help in grooming a new habit within your organizational culture, would you know what to ask for?

I have attended dozens of workshops over the years, and when I narrow down their take-aways to those impact-full bits which have truly stayed with me, a now-yellowed handout is the first thing which pops into very clear focus in my mind’s eye. Yes, even more than all the handouts I give people for Managing with Aloha.

I make sure this lesson is a part of every single class I do which specifically targets improving workplace productivity. If the lesson resonates with my students —and it always does— and if they choose to proactively believe in its magic, they will make it work in their favor. Everything else we set our sights on achieving will become so much easier.

It’s a riddle I received when getting my certification as a 7 Habits trainer with the Stephen R. Covey Leadership Center back in 1995:

Who do you suppose this is?

“I am your constant companion.
I will push you forward to success or I will drag you down to failure.
I am completely at your command.
80% of what you do, you might as well hand over to me and I will do it promptly and I will do it correctly.
I am easily managed; you must merely be firm with me.
Show me what you’d like to have done, and after a couple of lessons, I will do it automatically.
I am the servant of all great people.

Alas, I am the servant of all failures as well.
All who are great, I have made great.
All who are failures, I have made failures.
I am not a machine; but I do work with the precision of a machine and the intellect of a human.

Take me, train me, be firm with me, and I’ll lay the world at your feet.
Be easy with me, and I will destroy you!”

“Who am I?”

Postscript: I would love to give credit where credit is due for this, but it was on a plain white sheet of paper to keep us guessing until the great reveal of the answer. I am not sure if it came from Covey (not then Franklin-Covey), The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, where I was employed at the time, or Julie, the very smart Covey coach who gave it to me.

The answer, as you can more easily guess from the framing of my posting today, is “I am your habits.”

Habits are powerful magic. Problem is that we tend to mostly think about bad ones – like smoking, and biting our fingernails, or twirling our hair – and not about the fact that there are exceptionally good ones too. Some are simple, but they make a profound difference in our lives, like biting your lip each time you are tempted to blurt out a negative statement, so you can catch yourself and say something more encouraging or nothing at all.

The best productivity tip I can give you, is to proactively create good habits that put you on automatic pilot in a good way, in an advantageous way. For instance…

• Take just two full minutes to stand at the side of your bed and stretch every morning before you head off toward the bathroom to brush your teeth – do it consciously for the next two weeks, and you will find you do it from now on. Stretching your muscles to wake up every limb in your body and gain more energy for the day will become the automatic pilot of how you wake up. You will be more alert.

• Simply put your blackberry or iPhone down on a surface in front of you every time someone speaks to you (your pocket or on your lap works too), and you will focus on them, listen better, and never be thought of as a rude crackberry addict again. More on this one here: Send that Blackberry to Solitary Confinement.

• Choose a morning or afternoon where a Weekly Review is done with your calendar as sacred, non-negotiable planning time, and you will never miss an important appointment or trace date again. You will begin to make time for all those nagging projects that never get scheduled, and you’ll begin to say “no” to the clutter and procrastination which has now become so visible week after week.

As we wind up this ‘taxing’ week of April, I encourage you to read over this Habit Riddle one more time. Take inventory of your habits, and choose to create some good ones which can replace the not-so-good ones.

Better yet, enroll someone else in your goals and ask them to coach you. Scroll back up to those two questions at the top and get a good friend or team member to partner up with you in answering them; you may find that you both want to work on the same thing.

Then, let’s talk story! Let me know how it goes, will you?

• Which of your own personal habits are the ones which ‘push you forward to success’ and which ones ‘drag you down to failure’?
• Which of your own personal habits are you ‘firm’ with, and which do you ‘go easy on’?

Any thoughts to share? Comment here, or via the tweet-conversation we have on Twitter @sayalakai.

• When Made to Stick Will (April 14th)
• Become the Tax Man: Groom Your Self-Discipline with Deadlines (April 9th)
• Who says you can’t do that? (April 2nd)
• Desire Always Precedes Change… and the 10 Steps to an Organizational Culture of Change Agents (January 11th)
• The Writing Habit: Best Gift You Can Give (December 14th)

Tags: energy, habits, productivity, questions, self-management

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 16th, 2009 at 1:00 am and is filed under Process and Productivity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.