Nothing damages your Success as much as these nine bad habits. They are stealthy and hideous and creeping up on you slowly until you don't even notice the damage they're causing.
Bad habits slow you down, decrease your accuracy, make you less creative and overall decrease your performance resulting in your ultimate failure despite your hard work and efforts.
A study conducted by University of Minnesota found that people who practice self-control tend to be much happier than those who don't, both in the moment and in the long run.
Some bad habits cause more trouble than others but these nine are your worst enemies -
1- IMPULSIVELY SURFING THE INTERNET :
It takes you 15 consecutive minutes of focus before you can fully engage in a task. Once you do, you fall into a 'flow', a state of increased productivity. Researches have shown that people in a flow are five times more productive than they otherwise would be.
But click in and out of your work to check the news-feed of your social media pulls you out of the flow. Then again you have to spend another 15 minutes to gain that flow again.
2- PERFECTIONISM :
We freeze up when its time to get started because we know that our ideas aren't perfect and what we produce might not be good enough. But you can never produce something great if you don't get started and give your ideas time to evolve. Author Jodi Picoult summarized the importance of avoiding perfectionism perfectly: "You can edit a bad page, but you can't edit a blank page."
3- MEETINGS :
Meetings eats up your time like no other. Ultra-productive people avoid meetings as much as they can. A Meeting could drag on forever, so when you must attend a meeting, inform everyone that you want to stick to the intended schedule. This makes the meeting more focused and efficient.
4- RESPONDING TO E-MAILS OR MESSAGES AS THEY ARRIVE :
Don't allow e-mails and messages to be a constant interruption. Check your e-mails and messages on a schedule (set specific time slots in a day for that). Prioritize messages by senders. Set up an autoresponder that lets senders know when you will be checking their messages and e-mails again.
5- HITTING THE SNOOZE BUTTON :
No matter how tired you think you are when your alarm clock starts ringing, force yourself out of the bed. When you hit the snooze button and fall back asleep, you lose the alertness you'd get by respecting your sleep cycle and end up waking up later, tired and feeling wasteful.
6- MULTITASKING :
Research conducted at Stanford University confirms that multitasking is less productive than doing a single thing at a time. People who are regularly consuming several streams of electronic information cannot pay attention and recall information. When you try to do two things at once, your brain lacks the capacity to perform both the tasks successfully.
7- PUTTING OFF TOUGH TASKS :
When you put off tough tasks till late in the day because they are terrifyingly difficult or big, you save them for when you you are at your worst level of decision making energy called decision fatigue state. To beat decision fatigue, you must tackle complex tasks in the morning when your mind is fresh.
8- USING YOUR PHONE IN BED :
Short- wavelength blue light plays an important role in your mood and energy level. In the morning, sunlight emits large quantity of blue lights, so human mind understands blue light exposure as a signal for starting its daily work. But exposure of blue light emitting from you phone screen results in blocking the production of sleep hormone called melatonin and interferes with your ability to sleep.
9- EATING TOO MUCH SUGAR :
You need glucose to concentrate on challenging tasks. But different food have different duration of glucose in your body. Donuts, soda, and other forms of refined sugar lead to an energy boost that lasts only 20 minutes, while oats, brown rice, and other foods containing complex carbohydrates release their energy slowly, which enables you to sustain your focus.
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