3. Why Your Time Management or Productivity System is Not Working
We recently began potty-training my 2-year-old. This is our second child, so I thought it would be easier. It is not.
So far, we have not been able to get him to pee in the potty even once. Yet, when he pees in his diaper, he tells me “Mommy, I need to change my diaper.” (And, yes, in case you’re wondering, he does speak in full sentences).
Recently, when he came up to me and said “Mommy, I need to change my diaper,” I immediately knew he had a blowout and took him straight to the bathroom. After I finished cleaning him up, he insisted that I put him on the potty. While I knew that this was a futile exercise, I played along because we were on mission to teach him a new habit.
So, I placed him on the potty. He then looked around the bathroom and down into the potty and then again and said with great disappointment, “it’s not working Mommy.”
“What is not working?” I replied.
“The potty! It’s not working!” as he looked down again now with frustration, expecting to see urine, and then disappointed when he saw nothing inside the potty.
I burst out into laughter. He was so serious, and I probably should have given some reassuring words, but I could not help myself.
I had put him on the potty every three hours for the last few days, expecting him to form a new habit of urinating in the potty rather than in his diaper. However, our expectations were clearly mismatched. Each time that he had sat on the potty, he believed that the potty would make him pee. He didn’t have to change anything or make any new effort. It was the potty that was going to make the magic happen.
Toddlers truly bring such laughter and joy, along with important life lessons.
In this case, what can we learn from my toddler? Tell me if this sounds familiar. You have made goals to “manage your time better” and “be more productive.” So, you learn a new time management or productivity hack. Or you download a new to-do app. You apply your new tool, hoping to see change, and hoping to feel different – less stressed, more in control, etc. But then, nothing changes. Or if some change does occur, it is not sustained. And like my son, you grow disappointed, and then frustrated as deadlines continue to slip and to-do-lists grow longer.
So, why are your tools and systems not working? If you buy the newest and greatest running shoes, do you instantly become a runner? Or if you buy gourmet kitchenware, are you instantly a five-star chef? Of course, not.
Habits determine your success in your personal and professional goals.
A habit is defined by Charles Duhigg, an investigative journalist, in his widely read book The Power of Habit as “a choice that we deliberately make at some point, and stop thinking about it, but continue doing, often every day.” Studies show that 40% of the daily activities that people perform are habits. That means that we spend nearly half of our time doing automatic, non-deliberate actions. This is the reason we can sometimes go through an entire day recalling very little of what we did, because we spent half the time in autopilot, not really making conscious decisions.
Habits – the repetitive actions you do each day – determine your productivity.
If you value athleticism and decide that you want to become a marathon runner, you must understand the deliberate choices that marathon runners make in order to succeed, and turn those choices into habits. Comfortable shoes will not do the running for you (although, they do make running easier).
When you have the right habits – that is, habits that are tied to your core values – then the systems or tools you use are all about style and preference. In other words, it really doesn’t matter which to-do app, scheduler/calendar, or project management software you use. In fact, you can choose to be low-tech and use pen, paper and sticky notes (yep, there was a time when that was all I used) and if you have the key habits that are aligned with your values and vision, you can still be “more productive.”
So, how do we form better habits?
First, consider the core values that you have identified. What habits are associated with those values? These are the “better” habits that you want to form.
Second, familiarize yourself with the habit loop as described in The Power of Habit. This is the way the brain hardwires our actions and places them on autopilot. The loop consists of three parts: the cue, the routine, and the reward.
As an example, I will share how I took advantage of this loop to go from a couch potato to an exercise enthusiast.
The Cue
This is the trigger that jumpstarts your habit.
Cues can fall into the following categories:
Sensory — something you see, hear, taste, etc.
Emotional — a feeling or sensation
Environment or Location
People
Time
Example: Because brushing my teeth was my first activity every single morning, I decided to create a visual cue by keeping a set of clean exercise clothes on my bathroom vanity.
The Routine
This is the actual habitual behavior or action.
Example: The habit I wanted to form was exercising every day.
The Reward
Rewards are what the habit does for you. It’s the reason your brain hardwires your behavior or action. It’s the reason your brain says, I am going to do it again and again and again.
Example: Coming up with a reward that would encourage me to exercise was hard in the beginning. I was six months post-partum and, when I started exercising, I was very deconditioned. I didn’t get the natural thrill that you’re supposed to get. In fact, after even a 5-minute session, I would feel nauseous, dizzy and lightheaded, and I had muscle cramps. So, I would initially reward myself with “alone time” for every minute I exercised. Time to myself to do absolutely nothing. As a busy mom of young kids, this was the reward I craved. With time and consistency though, I began to get the natural thrill from exercising and would crave it in the morning, so external rewards became unnecessary.
Forming better habits requires time, consistency and positive reinforcement (just like potty training).
Without doing the hard work of forming habits that are aligned with your values, you will soon become frustrated – or distressed – that your productivity system is just not working.
Check out my next post, “Time Under Tension: 3 Steps to Getting Started and Remaining Motivated,” as you embark on the journey to forming better habits.
Want to learn more about habit formation?
Listen to this 3-min video from The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg to learn more about breaking habits.
In addition to Duhigg’s book, read Atomic Habits by James Clear to learn about the power of small and consistent actions.
Lastly, subscribe to Time Matters to receive free exercises to accompany this article.