How to Break Your Bad Habits and Increase Your Productivity

Some people always want to be productive and can’t resist the day without doing anything, they usually work hard and always follow their work schedule. For some reason, I became interested in productivity so I decided to read the popular book by James Clear, Atomic Habits. The book is worth reading and you will learn a lot from it. Somehow, the book helped me to increase my productivity and start breaking my bad habits.

I will share the things that helped me personally with productivity and hopefully, it will also work for you. 

Also read: Tiny Changes, Remarkable Results | Things That I Learned From Atomic Habits

Make it difficult

If you have read the book Atomic Habits, you are already familiar with this. Making it difficult is the inverse of the 3rd law from the book which is to make it easy. Making your bad habits difficult will push you to quit and stop doing them. According to the book, the psychology of this is that people love doing easier things. This is why scrolling from your social media feed is what always distracts you from work; it is easier than working. 

So, to break this bad habit, make your habit difficult. In my case, one of my major distractions every time I study and write is that I always end up being sleepy so instead of working and studying, I sleep. My solution is I am putting boxes on my bed so by the time that I feel sleepy while studying, I will find sleeping and lying down difficult because I need to remove all the boxes first. It will need an extra effort so my brain will believe that sleeping is not a good idea.

This solution works for me, just don’t put an extra space so you cannot lie on it!

Block the distractions

Aside from being lazy, one of the major problems that we are facing is distractions. For me, the main distractions are the applications and social media from my phone. Instead of working, I end up scrolling from my feed and waste my time scrolling for 1-2 hours. It is frustrating when my whole day is messed up with this habit.

This is how I discovered the Block app. It is an app where the user can block an application depending on how long you set it up. You can also limit the usage of your apps, for example, last week I set a 2-hour daily usage for my selected apps. Once I use the app for 2 hours, the Block app will automatically block it and resets it every 3:00 am of the next day.

You can also simply turn off your phone and then hide it in your cabinet during your work hours to avoid checking notifications and scrolling from your social media feed. In my case, I don’t have a laptop yet so I use my phone for work and it is kinda hard because scrolling is tempting me.

I published a full review about setting up the Block app and you can read it here: Increase your productivity with an app.

Surround yourself with the people who have the same habit that you want

There is this saying, “Surround yourself with successful people, and you will be successful.” It is the same as building your habit. If you want to break your bad habit, surround yourself with productive people and work with them. Believe it or not, I hate writing but then I got exposed to the writer community and it developed my writing habits. 

This also works for me because during the quarantine months, I am looking for ways to become productive and then I joined this group of mathematicians where they had a daily activity wherein a particular person is assigned to teach math with other members. This habit developed my mathematical skills (somehow) and enhanced my knowledge.

One thing that I am looking for is that people around me influenced me to do the same thing. 

Never punish yourself

I think the common mistake why we have bad habits instead of good ones is that we are punishing ourselves by doing the latter. You see, it is true that good habits are usually hard; working out, cleaning your office, reading 200-page books, etc. this is the reason why we can’t stick to becoming productive.

So, if you are not open-minded, your mind thinks that you are punishing yourself by doing it. Hence, the best solution for this is to reward yourself every time you finish a task. By this, you are not discouraged from doing productive things.

Also, take note that you should not pressure yourself by doing everything at once. Learn to divide the task, the week has a lot of days, and do the things that you have to prioritize on the first through the third day of the week so you will not miss anything of it. The simple way to accomplish this is by planning and making your schedule or timeline.

Making a schedule and timeline

I was not a fan of this because I find it funny and corny to think that this habit is for girls only, but then after watching and reading several videos and blogs about productivity, I realized that it is very helpful to have good habits and become productive.

But truthfully, this habit is not somewhat effective for me – I mean, it is effective but there are days that I end up not staying on my schedule. 

I am still in the process of trial and error on what are the ways that I can do to increase my productivity. I am not always productive, in fact, most of my time every day is wasted scrolling on social media. 

It is just that I am pushing myself to move forward and be productive so I won’t be guilty at the end of the day. 

For a life-changing and long term changes, this book will help you to break your bad habits and increase productivity: Atomic Habits.

• If you want to support me as a writer, you can buy me a coffee at a Ko-fi shop☕

• If you like shopping online, consider liking and following this Facebook page: Cheap N Sale 🛒

• You can find me everywhere using Coin Tree 🌴

Published: May 21, 2022