How to Abandon Negative Habits & Adopt Productive Practices
Ready to learn how to turn your back on negative habits? And how to incorporate more productive practices into your life?
While negative habits can prevent us from incorporating productive practices into our lives – these two are not opposites!
As you remove negative habits from your life, make sure you use some of that reclaimed time for self-care to replenish and restore your mental, physical, and emotional energy reserves!
I can’t say this enough, negative habits are not the opposite of productive practices. If you’re seeking to find ways to fill your day only with productivity, you’re setting yourself up for burnout.
If you want to learn more about burnout, checkout the four part burnout series of Solicited Advice Episodes starting here.
Now, let’s talk about negative habits. . .
The first step in removing negative habits from your life is to get clear on why this habit is negative:
Ask yourself:
- How is this habit bringing harm to me or others in my life?
- How would my life be better if I no longer engaged in this habit?
The answers to these questions are your why for making the habit change. And once you know the why, it’s much easier to follow through on making changes.
The next step is to break your habit change into baby steps:
Small, incremental steps are much easier to make than large sweeping ones. Read more about the power of little steps here.
Let’s take an example of wanting to cut down on the amount of time you spend scrolling through social media in order to make more time for face-to-face interactions.
Instead of declaring you’re off social media cold-turkey, try using the Digital Wellbeing function on your phone to reduce the amount of time you have access to your social media apps by 5-15 minute each week.
The next step is to celebrate and recommit:
Take time each week to evaluate your progress on your habit changes. Celebrate your progress. Even if it feel like it’s too small to celebrate, celebrate it anyway!
And then recommit yourself, what’s the next little step you need to take toward your goal? Set this new target and start working toward it.
If you slipped during the week in progress toward your goal, give yourself the grace to remember you’re only human. We’re always one step away from falling off track, and one step away from getting back on the path. Get back on the path and recommit!
Finally, build in productive practices:
As you’ve been eliminating negative habits from your life, you’ve most likely found you have more time and energy throughout your day. You can use these to add additional productivity to your life.
However, make sure you’re also using some of that time for rest and restoration.
To learn a few simple productivity techniques to help you make the most of the time you’re reclaiming, check out my free Productivity Workshop.
