Focus On Habits, Not Goals

“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”

A mindset is a set of assumptions, methods, or notations that is so established that it creates a powerful incentive within you to continue to adopt or accept prior behaviours, choices, or tools.

It’s so powerful that it affects every decision-making process. It predetermines your responses and interpretations of situations.

When we become used to the daily grind, we end up losing ourselves along the way. It is only when we approach work with the mindset of providing value that we gain a sense of achievement.

Ask yourself why you have this job. Does it involve work you are passionate about? Is there something you particularly enjoy about this work?

Our future may be more exciting than our current situation. You can leverage that to your advantage by using it as motivation to work harder.

Use each job you hold as a stepping stone towards your goal. Your current position serves a purpose, whether it is to build your resume, teach you skills, or help you save money to look for a new job.

To keep you highly motivated, set a deadline, and break your goals down into smaller, achievable tasks.

Pick a place for your office away from distraction.
Boundaries also apply to other people who may be sharing the same space. Children can work alongside you as if they were coming to the office.

You won't have the same cues as you do from your workplace to remind you to get up or get lunch. When you lose the pace of your day, everything can start to blend together.

Treat your exercise, meals and stretch breaks as you would any other meeting. Put it on your calendar, at least to start.

Think of your life as a long sequence of actions and decisions.

Just ask yourself, “Is this a good thing to do?” If the answer is Yes, go do it.

1. Keep It Small — It’s about thinking big and acting small. You’ll achieve those big goals in time.

2. Measure Your Progress — If you don’t measure your progress, it’s safe to say that you are not making any. 

3. Be Accountable To Yourself — One of the most important skills you can learn in life is to be self-reliant. 

It's up to you to define what a good habit is. This critical to forming new habits. 

To find your why, your reason to change, just ask yourself this: “Will habit x improve the quality of my life?”  Answer that. And then, adopt habits that bring you closer to the things you want in life.

We overestimate ourselves most of the time. And that's one of the reasons we try to do so many things at the same time, in a short period.

We can achieve a lot over a long period. So focus on one thing at a time. Stack one habit on top of the other, one by one.

Underestimating the possibility of disasters occurring. People incorrectly assume things will be as they have always been. Thus, they don’t have an urgency to prepare for the worst. The solution:  practical or defensive pesimism.

• Get an overview of everything that happened in the week. 
• Identify positives. Look at the things that you wanted to accomplish and did. 
• Identify negatives. Look at the things that you wanted to accomplish and didn’t. 
• Take notes and summarize your entire week, both positive and negative. 
• Take what you have learned from your previous week and plan your next week accordingly. 

This behavior keeps you from dedicating your time to meaningful work. Replying to email may feel productive, but the truth is emails are rarely the most important thing on your to-do list.

So instead of keeping your inbox open all day, change your default behavior to working on emails in batches.

Real-time communication sets the expectation that you’re always available. And for many of us, our default behaviors support just that.

In order to change this behavior, you need to set expectations on response time. Mute specific channels, get rid of pop-ups, turn off mobile notifications, etc.