How Rituals and Routines Help You Achieve More

Skill set alone rarely divides success and failure. Successful professionals understand that you must put yourself in a position to produce positive outcomes to achieve more. Hard and smart work are important elements of this positioning, but persistence is the defining factor that multiplies the impact of that work. Our modern attention-starved world offers a variety of painless, reliable, and abundant sources for personal and professional satisfaction. However, the relationships that produce consistent positive outcomes still take months and years to grow. In fact, the most satisfying deals evolve over many years of patient pursuit.

This approach requires tremendous persistence. It demands systems and processes that move your persistence practice from willpower to routine or ritual.

Routine vs. Ritual

Most people start their days with a standard routine. This may include brushing teeth, showering, and checking for new developments in their world. Some routines are more structured than others, but they’re all intended to streamline the daily, personal organization process. Routines permeate all areas of our professional lives, as well. Everything from the lanes you choose on the way to work, where you park, and what you do when you first step into the office is routine. These eliminate uncertainty and allow you to focus on work that requires a higher level of thought.

That said, as you go through your day, you may notice activities that take more time, thought, or energy. You give more attention to them even though they happen with regularity, like a routine. This time and focus is more important to you, whether it is collaborative or individual deep work. These are your rituals. Attitude differentiates routine and ritual. The simplest, most routine task, like brushing your teeth can easily become a ritual if you were you give it the same attention as, say, prayer or meditation.

 Instead, your mind wanders through a variety of deep and superficial thoughts while you go about your routine.

Energy Flows Where Attention Goes

Rituals require your complete attention. They are important to you because they are integral part of your identity.  You may also find that you perform these rituals with more care and skill than most of your routines. Imagine if you were to spend as much time and attention on your routines as your rituals. Everything may take longer, but more than likely, you’d do each task with greater love and expect greater outcomes. Of course, you wouldn’t waste your time and energy on simple things that don’t require elevated attention.

However, an astute awareness of the things that should get additional attention will help restructure your day to achieve more with each minute.

Achieve More with Conversion

Consider your morning coffee run at the office. You and your colleagues wait anxiously for a turn to combine coffee, sugar, and creamer into the magic elixir that will power the day. The coffee station is often an area of low-energy commiserating. Each person shares a gripe about how challenging their morning is with the hope of one-upping each other and gaining the most attention for their problems. While the act of preparing your coffee may be routine, the social aspect is a ritual that defines the company culture. It sets a tone.

De plus, chaque participant prépare quelque chose à apporter au groupe lors de la prochaine séance pour ses 15 secondes de gloire. De nombreuses activités tout au long de votre journée partagent une expérience similaire. La façon dont vous les traitez définit votre état d'esprit pour le reste de la journée. Ces rituels épuisants se connectent profondément à votre âme. Pourtant, de nombreuses autres activités valorisantes s'intègrent dans une routine sans donner aucun attachement émotionnel. Comment votre vie changerait-elle si vous pouviez convertir des routines précieuses en rituels positifs et significatifs ?

Faites l'inventaire de vos routines et rituels

Real estate acquisitions and asset management are complex specializations with many routines and subroutines. The practitioner performs a daily set of activities to fill and maintain a revenue pipeline, while also preparing periodic reporting required by lenders and investors. She soon discovers and invents systems and processes to minimize most of these activities into standing routines. Depending on how long you’ve been at it, these grooves are well-worn. They govern your daily activity more than your discretion. Inventory your routines as the first step in conquering your days.

Planifiez et suivez vos journées pendant une semaine, puis analysez le résultat. Cet exercice révèle des aspects de votre journée que vous considérez à peine. Il met également votre esprit en état d'alerte sur ce que vous faites à ce moment-là. Concentrez-vous sur les transitions de chaque tâche et sur la façon dont elles influencent la suivante. N'oubliez pas que votre objectif est de faire en sorte que la persévérance vous permette d'atteindre facilement vos objectifs. Réfléchissez à la façon dont chaque activité de votre journée vous rapproche ou vous éloigne de ces objectifs.

Maintenant, réfléchissez aux activités qui devraient recevoir plus d’attention et de sens.

Build a Community

La volonté peut vous mener très loin. Au-delà de cela, vous avez besoin d'un système de soutien pour continuer à progresser. Les personnes qui vous entourent ont une influence considérable sur votre réussite. Ceux qui ont un état d'esprit de croissance vous aideront à accomplir davantage, tandis que les personnes ayant un état d'esprit fixe vous maintiendront là où vous vous sentiez à l'aise. Le changement est difficile car vous devez généralement quitter ou marginaliser votre ancienne communauté pour faire place à la nouvelle. La communauté apporte de la valeur de trois manières lorsque vous démarrez quelque chose de nouveau.

First, these people are pursuing similar goals in complementary specializations. They are spending time on self-improvement just like you, but they may encounter different resources. Discussions will be rich with best practices and innovative thoughts, and each person brings knowledge beyond what you can source on your own. Second, each person has a different perspective and experience level. Diversity creates fertile ground for healthy conflict, which contributes to individual growth. Approach the group with an open mind to find the positive opportunities in each conflict.

Finalement, vous échouerez. Si vous vous y prenez bien et prenez les risques appropriés, vous ne connaîtrez pas le succès avant un certain temps. La communauté sera là pour vous rattraper lorsque vous échouerez. Chaque nouvelle aventure semble impossible lorsque vous avancez suffisamment, et vous aurez envie d'abandonner. Cependant, le succès est généralement au bout de ce creux, alors tenez bon jusqu'à ce que cela commence à fonctionner.

Build Habits for Everything Else

Habits are powerful. They are automatic, mindless, and satisfying. This can be a problem in some cases, but you can turn it around to make habits work in your favor. Therefore, strive to form better habits and eliminate bad ones by understanding how habits work. Easy is at the core of every habit. Make the activity easier to do and you’ll find success in creating a habit around it.

However, if you make it just slightly more difficult the habit won’t stick.

Habit Stacking

Your daily routines are well-worn in your life right now, unless you’ve been pursuing a self-improvement journey already. Each of these routines are nearly habitual, too. Use this to your advantage by attaching desired activities to your existing routines.

L’empilement d’habitudes est la pratique consistant à regrouper des activités similaires dans des routines homogènes pour obtenir plus que la somme des parties.

Your morning hygiene routine is a great example of this. Each activity from brushing teeth to flossing to taking a shower complements each other.

If you were to break this routine into component parts throughout the day, you wouldn’t get nearly as much efficiency as bundling them together in the morning. More than likely, you have many of these stacked routines throughout your day, and they usually revolve around sleep and meals. Think about that for a second. How many routines do you stack on top of waking up, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and bedtime? How many more do you think you can add to each? Remember, habits stick when the activity is easy.

Breaking your flow to incorporate a new activity is difficult. However, it becomes more palatable if you were to bolt it onto an existing routine. Cold calling is one of the most dreaded activities for most business development professionals, but it is also the most valuable when practiced routinely. Still, most people come up with dozens of excuses when the scheduled cold calling time pops up on their calendar. Imagine not having the time to make excuses because you’re already immersed in something. For example, the transition from lunch and emails to cold calls is easier because that’s just what you do. Every day.

Rendre les mauvaises habitudes trop gênantes

Si la clé pour créer des habitudes positives est de les rendre plus pratiques, alors l'inverse doit être vrai. Et c'est le cas. Tout le monde a de mauvaises habitudes. Certaines sont plus désagréables que d'autres, mais toutes ont la même signature. Ce sont des choses que vous aimeriez pouvoir arrêter, mais vous persistez parce que c'est confortable et satisfaisant. À l'époque moderne, les réseaux sociaux ont facilement dépassé le tabagisme, le fait de se ronger les ongles et de se curer le nez comme les pires habitudes pour la plupart des professionnels.

It’s accessible, and you get a high-quality dopamine hit fairly quickly every time you open the apps. You know it’s a waste of time, but you can’t help yourself. It’s too easy. Media companies don’t make it easy to break the habit, either. Your attention is their bread and butter, so they’ll keep finding ways to capture more of it. “Would you like us to inform you every time your friends send you a message? Turn on push notifications.”

Il s’avère que 20 secondes d’inconfort peuvent briser votre désir de la plupart des habitudes. Ce timing peut varier selon les habitudes, mais le principe reste le même. Si l’habitude est trop inconfortable, vous aurez moins tendance à la mettre en pratique. Vous remarquerez probablement que l’accumulation d’habitudes adopte l’approche inverse. Elle rend vos bonnes actions plus pratiques. Par conséquent, l’accomplissement de ces tâches devient plus probable. Revenons à notre exemple des réseaux sociaux : un limiteur de temps d’écran peut être utile pour ajouter ce petit peu de friction qui interrompt le modèle d’habitude. De plus, pensez à désactiver toutes les notifications afin de ne consulter les applications que lorsque cela vous convient dans votre emploi du temps.

Commencez petit

Goals are good to help you achieve more. Nevertheless, they’re usually big, complex, and unreachable in a short period. This is a recipe for failure, which is why most people abandon their New Year’s resolutions by February. Consistency is the most important contributor to goal attainment. Small, incremental steps that build on each other compound into major achievements. The same principles that work so well for retirement savings are also applicable to personal and professional growth.

Une amélioration d'un pour cent par jour se traduit par une amélioration de 3778 % sur un an. C'est 38x ! Utilisez des rythmes naturels pour gérer ces objectifs. Les trimestres calendaires ou les saisons météorologiques sont utiles pour réduire les objectifs annuels en morceaux gérables. À partir de là, il est facile de les réduire encore plus en semaines et en jours. Mesurez votre succès en fonction des réalisations quotidiennes. Vous pourrez maximiser le résultat en optimisant chaque partie avec de bons objectifs.