Getting rid of bad habits

I read this interesting article on LinkedIn the other day about habits that the successful people out there tend to avoid. It made quite interesting reading and I thought about that is what most people do.

Lets have a look at the 7 habits that successful people avoid.

1. Perfectionism

This is something that I am sure a lot of people out there can identify with. When we are not sure how to do something, we will procrastinate and procrastinate and procrastinate some more because we don't want to look dumb or incompetent which I suppose is the same thing. Perfectionism stops us from trying. It prevents us from taking risks and it prevents from doing something that is a major part of success ... failing.


2. Waiting on opportunity

"Carpe Diem boys. Seize the day. Make your lives extraordinary."

If you wait for the opportunity to present itself then one day it will be gone and you will be standing there thinking what happened? So, get out there. Find those opportunities and really make them work. You will not regret it.


3. Driven to distraction

We are so connected these days it's amazing. There are emails to answer, and social media profiles to update and texts to reply to. It can get overwhelming. One thing that I have tried and it is something that is suggested in this article. That is to turn off the notifications on your phone. They can be very distracting. I turned most of mine off recently and it is quite refreshing. It is a bit weird that I don't see messages until 24 hours later because i have forgotten to check them but I am sure the sender won't die wondering if I have received the message or not.


4. Letting others set the agenda

It's your life and you need to do what you need to do not what some other person wants you to do. If you want to stay in on that Friday night then do it. What rule says you have to go out and get blindingly drunk? There is absolutely no rule that says that.


5. Procrastinating

Some of us have a PhD in procrastination. I do sometimes. Do you? In this book by legendary self-help expert, Brian Tracy, he talks about eating the frog, in other words doing the worst thing on your to-do list first so that you can go throughout the rest of the day knowing that you have completed the worst thing on your list and it's all down hill from there. I had to write a report before writing this post and I procrastinated on it. Not a good look at all.

6. Resisting change

I know a lot of us don't like it. We get into a pattern in our lives and it is sometimes hard to get out of it and when something new comes along we resist it and resist it. Obviously we don't want to attach ourselves to every new thing but it is at least worth a look.


7. Multitasking

I've tried to do this in which I would spend 10 minutes on one thing,  I would spend another 10 minutes on another thing and then 5 minutes on something else. I got a lot done admittedly but I found that I lost focus quite quickly. It was good that I was able to get a lot done and I seemed to knock the top off a couple of projects but I found that I would get on a roll and then the 10 minutes would be up and I had to concentrate on something else.

There you go. If you can get rid of those habits then you might be on to something. Of course it is going to be difficult doing it all cold turkey but if you can eliminate your bad habits one at a time then success may just be around the corner.

Good luck!