This time of year many of us are thinking about the habits in our lives that we want to change—or new habits we want to establish. Some habits are very easy to identify as “bad.” For example, we all know smoking is bad for us, we shouldn’t look at text messages while driving, and staying up watching late-night television instead of getting enough sleep isn’t the best choice.
Those habits are obviously not good ones, and should almost certainly be changed or eliminated. But sometimes there are also good habits in your life that might not be the best habits for achieving the kind of success you desire.
For example, think about how a leader might handle distractions. In order to limit distractions and boost their productivity, many highly successful people practice habits like keeping their office doors shut, the notifications on their phones turned off, or only checking their email a couple times a day.
These are excellent habits if your primary goal is to be productive and efficient. But if one of your goals is to be a very approachable and responsive leader, these otherwise good habits might create barriers to approachability, and might hamper your ability to be responsive to those you lead and serve. So a key part of successful habits is identifying and selecting the right habits for you and for what you hope to achieve.
In one of my next articles I will share several examples and suggestions from my book, Be An Inspirational Leader, of habits that you might want to develop as part of your journey to becoming a more inspirational leader and achieving greater success. In the meantime, give it some thought. Do you have any habits—good or bad—that you might need to change or eliminate? What habits would you like to develop instead?
