Key leadership skills often involve tackling big projects. However, they can also depend upon small habits. Are there several things you do each day without even thinking about it? We all have these things. For example, this includes steps as simple as getting out of bed and going to bed. These are actions we naturally take. What are some new routines you would like to add to your life to help you be more productive at home or work? What do you want to do to improve yourself? There are some ways to incorporate new actions into your life to make some positive changes.  

Habits can be useful to us as we make our way through our everyday lives. For example, we don’t have to think about turning on lights as we enter a room or about the steps involved to make that first cup of coffee in the morning. These small actions make getting through the day easier for us. In fact, some science says that habits comprise about 40 to 45% of our daily actions. So, we should want these actions to be useful to us. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear says habits truly can determine the arc of our lives; that can be for better or worse. The behaviors you consistently exhibit really do determine where you go in life. So, it is vital that we create habits that place us on a good path.

There are several strategies for walking this new path to change in your life, with regard to incorporating new actions into your day. One strategy is to focus on mini-habits. These are small, positive changes that help you be more productive each day. In his book Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results (Volume 1), Stephen Guise suggests the way to creating a mini-habit is to think about what your end goal is and then work toward that with small pieces that are too small to fail. Consider what your big goal is and only do one small part of that each day. Habits are built by consistency, so the important thing is to make the action something you can and will do each day. You want to make it something that would be easy to succeed at. 

James Clear suggests focussing on systems as opposed to actual goals. He says you should focus on what you want to become as opposed to what you want to achieve. Then you focus on the systems and routines you need to create, not just try to create goals around it. He talks about the laws of habit change and that the system has to be easy to do and to remember. It also has to be attractive to you so you want to do it. In fact, the action should be easier to do than to not do.

Habit Stacking: 127 Small Changes to Improve Your Health, Wealth, and Happiness by S.J. Scott is another book offering a view on how to work new habits into your life. Scott presents the idea of habit stacking. This is the act of taking small habits and adding them onto something else you already have as a habit so you can make things into a routine or sequence and you don’t have to remember each one.

What habits can make you a better leader or more productive? Consider the small steps you can take, beginning today, to put you on the path to what you want to become. You don’t have to make radical, sweeping changes. Think about the small habits you can begin that will get you started. These small changes can create new destinations on your life journey. So, where do you want to go?