How often do you check your phone each day?
10 times? 50 times? No idea because it’s such an unconscious habit?
In yesterday’s Thursday HotSeat, we discussed using this common habit to our advantage.
By piggy-backing on this behaviour, which already exists as a solidly recurring habit for many of us, and swapping the action for something which supports the achievement of our goals, we can turn this less than ideal use of time into a winning habit.
The science shows that it’s much easier to create a new habit by linking it to an old one that’s already cemented. James Clear, the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Atomic Habits, calls it ‘habit stacking’.
He provides a deep-dive into how this works and how to use it in your everyday life in this article entitled ‘How to build New habits by Taking Advantage of Old Ones’.
In the case of today’s session, the opportunity we explored with our phone use was to change the content that we are focussing on whilst using our phone. In this way we could harness the power of our attention to fuel the outcomes we’d really love to accomplish in life and business, rather than allowing ourselves to be hijacked with distractions or time-fillers.
One way to do that is to create a note in your phone which lists the things that you would love to have more of in your life and business, which you can put your attention on and tweak and attend to every day in place of another less productive phone activity like getting lost on social media or other sites.
What we focus on in life and business largely dictates the results and situations that show up for us, so this is a great way to ensure we are giving attention to those things which are important to us longer term.
In addition to the list, you can also add any questions related to achieving those things that you would like answers to. For example, ‘How can I accelerate the realisation of this?’ or ‘Who can help me with this?’.
This harnesses the solutions-focussed part of our mind and allows it to go to work for us in the background whilst we go about our day, preparing to fill in the blanks and the Hows and Whos that will support us in our grand endeavours.
So what are you waiting for? Grab your phone and get started!
