Why leadership habits are so hard to break, the neuroscience behind it, and four research-backed tips to replace old patterns with better ones.
Did you know roughly 43% of each day, including our leadership habits, is spent habitually? Wendy Wood, author of Good Habits, Bad Habits, has spent nearly three decades studying habits and determined close to half of our time is spent unintentionally.
What could happen if even 20% of that time was redirected and intentionally focused?
Recently I was listening to a podcast with James Clear, author of Atomic Habits. He was talking about how many of our habits are formed incidentally, simply because we repeat a certain behavior in the same context long enough. The activity gets repeated because initially it gave us some kind of reward.
Clear also says every habit is like a vote for what kind of person we want to be. This means even our unconscious habits are shaping our identity.
Unfortunately for many of us, too many habits outlive their value. What once provided a dose of satisfaction has turned into a drain on our time and energy.
Why it’s hard to change a habit
Most of us do seemingly inconsequential things every day that we know aren’t our best choices. They may not be immediately or obviously damaging, but we know we could do better.
I know I’m not the only one who has said “Starting this week I’m not going to do X anymore” only to realize before the week ends, I’m back to doing X.
So why, when we’ve found the motivation to change a habit, do we keep going back to it?
Turns out the reason is more about physiology than willpower or self-control.
The two systems that control our behavior
As humans, we have two systems within our brains that run our behaviors.
One is deliberate: it is called the goal-directed system and resides in the prefrontal cortex. This system weighs options, analyzes, and decides.
The other is automatic: it’s called the habit system and resides in the basal ganglia region. It stores a repeated action as a single response to a familiar cue. Actions stemming from the habit system are driven by our environment, like time of day, location, and the people or places we associate with the behavior.
Because these two systems work independently, deciding to do something differently and having motivation to do it are ineffective on their own.
To change a habit we decide we want to and have a reason, but then we must determine how to redesign the cues that trigger that habit. For success, we need to orchestrate an environment that triggers the new preferred habit, as a replacement for the old.
In essence, it’s not enough to want to stop doing something. Our brains need a replacement activity, stimulated by the familiar cue, in order to let go of the undesirable one.
My Personal Challenge
Listening to James Clear inspired me to look at my daily habits, and identify which ones were hampering me vs. adding value
It took no time to recognize three I’d fallen into in recent months that were distracting and time-sucking.
The hard part, for me, was realizing I had unconsciously slipped into these patterns. I’m an executive coach. I know better! Then doing a little calculation of what each was costing me… Ouch!
What I Found
- Too much time with morning coffee doing NYT daily challenges.
- Scrolling social media before my day began and many times throughout the day.
- Checking email every time a notification caught my eye.
Conservatively, these three unconscious habits were eating up three hours of my day. If I added in the time it takes to regroup after being distracted, I was well into that 43% of an eight-hour workday. This had turned what could have been primarily eight-hour workdays into eleven-hour days.
These mindless behaviors had created serious time limitations for other things I enjoy and even need to do, while creating a sense of never having enough time.
I was rushing to prepare for clients, postponing things only I can do as the business owner, and skipping workouts, to name a few.
I finished my self-analysis in about 10 minutes, and I was instantly motivated to make some changes!
Turning Motivation into a Plan
Between the research from Wendy Wood and listening to James Clear, I already knew my motivation would not be enough to lose these habits. So, I took a few more minutes to write down “what would I do instead” – the replacement behaviors for the common triggers.
There are three questions that help coaching clients bridge their goal-directed and habit systems, so I answered them myself.
- Can I think of a time I was successful with something similar to this?
- What was different about that time?
- What (from that success) could I apply now?
It’s always fun to witness clients as they ponder the answers to these questions, because they nearly always have at least one “aha!” moment. It was no different for me.
Once I connected back to what I was doing differently when I felt more in control of my days, replacement behaviors became obvious. Simple too.
Confessions & Rewards
I can’t say I made the shifts and never looked back. In fact, just this morning I let 45 minutes slip by while doing my NYT challenges. But it’s OK, it was just one morning. I have the rest of today to make the good choices I’ve planned.
Research has confirmed that a slip here and there does not mean failure. and it takes an average of 66 days to solidify new habits. I’m only 16 days in, so I’m good!
Grabbing the reins on the hours I was squandering has already produced rewards:
- The peace of having adequate time to prepare for clients.
- The satisfaction of making time for things only I can do.
- 3-4+ solid workouts every week.
- Fewer delivery dinners too close to bed time.
Four Tips to Help You Replace “Bad” Habits with “Good” Ones
Maybe my experience has gotten you thinking about your own habits. These four easily applied steps will help you make rewarding shifts too.
- Remove the cue. Habits occur in response to specific triggers. When we take the trigger out of the environment, the habit goes with it. Example: I turned off my email notifications; the trigger causing me to interrupt myself all day.
- Add barriers to the old response. We continue habits because they are easily accessible and require no thought. Find ways to make the automatic behavior harder to execute in that moment. If it requires effort or thought, it becomes easy to let go of.
- Attach the new behavior to the existing trigger. Decide what your new habit will be in response to the trigger. This shifts fighting against the old pairing to simply feeding a new one. Example: I’m still doing my NYT challenges, but I set a 15-minute alarm and stop when it goes off, finished or not. My consolation is I can go back to it for another 15 minutes at the end of my workday – if I still want to.
- Repeat the new pairing consistently. Our habits only recalibrate through repetition in a stable context. Stimulus + Response repeated over time becomes habit.
Remember, the goal-directed system can’t override the habit system by trying harder. Change needs to be setup in advance and supported through repetition. It’s the repetition of the new behaviors that will ultimately eliminate the “bad” habits.
The Wrap
What could you accomplish if you consciously decided how to invest as much as 43% of your available time each day? What could you do with an extra 20%?
This week I encourage you to take a few minutes and walk through your typical day from start to finish. How are you spending your controllable time? Where are your opportunities to replace behaviors that no longer serve you with more effective habits?
Awareness is the first step toward deciding to make a change, finding your motivation, and then determining how to shift your environment and establish new actions in response to familiar cues.
Would you and your team benefit from identifying ineffective patterns and establishing new ones to better support your priorities and goals? Reach out today, we can help with that.
………………………………………………………………………….
Author Karen Pelot, MBA, PCC is the principal and lead practitioner of PERSPECTIVES. Her passion lies in helping leaders develop high trust, high accountability, high performing teams.