![]() The reward is the satisfaction I get from feeling productive by checking off a number of tasks. My routine is to check all my applications and immediately address whatever new stuff is waiting for me there - often, a Slack message or another email. The cue is finishing one task - like replying to an email - which signals a desire to move on to the next thing (“what now?”). My own worst work habit, for example, is ping-ponging between email, Slack, Trello and Twitter notifications while heavier and higher-priority tasks (like, oh I dunno, writing this article) get put off. These subconscious loops, as Charles Duhigg notes in his bestseller The Power of Habit, more or less follow the same pattern: a cue (or “trigger”) that sets your brain on autopilot, the routine you act out, and the reward you get from doing it, which reinforces acting upon the cue the next time it appears. Maybe we’re always interrupting people, or we’re chronically late to meetings, or we’ve got an excuse for everything that goes awry. Acting “without thinking,” writes psychologist Jeremy Dean in Making Habits, Breaking Habits, “or ‘automaticity,’ is a central component of a habit.”Īll of us can admit to a poor work habit that holds us back. What we’ve learned more recently is that habits - whether personal, organizational, or societal - are a subconscious loop. ![]() ![]() Andrews for The American Journal of Psychology waaay back in 1903, “is a more or less fixed way of thinking, willing, or feeling acquired through previous repetition of a mental experience.” ![]()
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