How do I Build Habits?

I am often asked questions that lead with the word, how. How do you do this, how do you do that, how can I be or do better in my career, life or otherwise. Or, how do you go about creating good professional habits? Which follows the lines of  my favorite question, also the premise of this post; how do you get out of bed so early in the morning? My answer: I made it a habit.

Those that know me, know that I work crazy hours often times hitting the pillow right prior to the rooster’s announcement of the day to come. And, I rise at roughly 6:00am everyday without the aid of an alarm clock. It used to be 5am but the older I get the more sleep I am learning I need.

How Did I Build the Habit of Rising Early? 

It all started in college. I played basketball at Texas Tech University back in the early 90’s and part of our pre-season conditioning was running at 5am – 4 days a week. Imagine trying to have a social life while being a student while training for basketball – its brutal. Granting the pre-season training was just a six-week stretch; it was still tough. And, required good habits. Rising early being one of them.

Rising early was not an easy task and getting to bed earlier was just not an option at that time in my life. So, what did I do? I put the alarm clock as far away from my bed as I possibly could. That act alone forced me to get out of bed and walk to turn it off. At that point it was absolute will power to not crawl back between the sheets. Now granted; I had massive leverage in that missing a morning run meant a serious consequence up to and including losing my full ride scholarship. But the action of getting out of bed that early over a six-week stretch, even with three days a week off, got me in the habit of rising early. And, I have never looked back.

Laying the Foundation Habits

What does rising early have to do with building good professional habits? I see three things in the life experience cited above; 1. catalyst 2. will power 3. massive leverage. It’s not one but all three working together that builds good habit.

Catalyst

Professionally [using a marketing bent], your catalyst should marry around something to the effect of; you will be the greatest social marketing master of all time. No kidding. Okay, maybe master is a stretch given the constantly changing environment. The point is that you must be willing to sacrifice massive amounts of time, effort and brain power to get up the curve and stay there. And, don’t think once you get there you can coast. It’s just as hard if not harder to maintain the pace concerning innovation, consistency, quality and quantity.

Will Power

To put it bluntly – some days it will just suck to be you. How do I get over that? I read a book some years ago that depicted a scenario where you pick the thing about your day that you just don’t want to do and go about making that the ‘knock it out of the park over the top most compelling and rich’ thing you have ever done in your life time. Try it – you’ll get the point when you get to the end of the project.

Massive Leverage

How do I create this in my life? I think about two things 1. My wife and kids depend on me to be the best I can be. 2. My good self can only be expanded upon or reduced upon by me. No one runs my game. I am responsible for the good, the bad and the ugly every day of the week. And to make sure I remember that; I read my personal creed along with my personal, professional and economic goals every single morning and with massive passion [read: creating massive leverage]. Read enough, things just seem to come together. I really can’t explain it except to tell you that it works 100% of the time.

Your rising early multifamily manic,

M