7 Effective Ways to Break Bad Habits

When the alarm goes off, you go to the kitchen right away to make coffee. You listen to the news or look at social media on your way to work. As soon as you get to work, you start reading emails. Sometimes these habits are so ingrained that you don’t even notice them during the day.

A lot of your day is made up of habits. Some help you turn off your brain, which makes you more productive and lighter on your mind. Some habits, like having a well-balanced lunch or going to the gym on your way home from work, also help you stay fit. Often snacking on sugary candies or going on social media to take your mind off of a hard job has the opposite effect. And habits that you can’t live without, like smoking or spending too much money, can even be harmful to your health.

To break bad habits, you need to first understand how they form and how they stay. This will give you the tools to support good behaviours and stop bad ones.

How do you describe a bad habit?

A meta-analysis released in Frontiers in Psychology says that a bad habit is a pattern that you stick to even when it’s actually bad for you.

Some bad habits, like putting off a hard task even though you know it’s important, are done on purpose. There’s a momentary sense of relief that makes you forget that it’s not a good habit. Though bad habits can sometimes be more obvious, like the desire to check email or social media a lot when you have hard things to do.

You may not be able to focus as well if you do these things all the time, which can hurt your ability to learn and grow professionally.

8 examples of bad habits

It’s not always easy to spot bad habits. You might not even be aware of how they’re getting into your daily life. Let’s look at a few bad habits that might make it harder for you to do your job and stay healthy.

1. Multitasking in meetings:

Managing multiple tasks at once may feel like optimum efficiency. Split attention is more likely to lower engagement and retention. Checking emails on a conference call can cause miscommunications, slip-ups, and missed expectations without you realising it.

2. Skipping breaks:

Getting things done without breaks shows devotion and self-discipline. This constant activity drains your mental energy, reducing focus and productivity. Burnout can make chores seem overwhelming.

3. Ignoring feedback:

To choose positive reinforcement is typical. Everyone likes ego boosts. Constructive comments also guides improvement. Not addressing peer or manager-identified skill gaps can create blind spots that can hurt team chemistry and collaboration. It may be perceived as toxic apathy or narcissism.

4. Delayed action:

Last-minute jobs may provide momentary relief from difficult work. Still, it leads to hasty, poor work. This unhealthy practice lowers work quality and increases stress as deadlines approach.

5. Neglecting mental health:

Due to your workload, you may put today’s deadlines before your mental health. Neglecting burnout or putting self-care last can wear you out, affecting your job performance, relationships, and life pleasure.

6. Sleep irregularities:

Sometimes changing your sleep schedule seems innocuous. However, skipping sleep, surfing before bed, or pushing the snooze button can impair cognition, emotions, and health. Workplace bad habits will hinder decision-making, creativity, and mood.

7. Poor diet:

In between all your daily duties, eating three healthy meals can be stressful. Only fast food or constant snacking will work. A crash, decreased focus, and mood might result from overeating or consuming unhealthy foods.

8. Smartphone addiction:

App, social media, and notification checking, especially at work, can ruin productivity. Cell phone addiction affects more than work. It can increase stress and obscure work-life boundaries.

Awareness is the first step to breaking undesirable habits. Recognising their impact on daily life will help you develop targeted positive behaviour initiatives.

How do we get into habits?

Many habits are formed without you being aware of it, but each one goes through a three-step process in your brain. That’s when your brain connects a cue to a behaviour. Repeating the link leads to a prize, which strengthens the link. More specifically, let’s look at it:

Cue: That’s the first thing that sets off a habit loop. It happens when your brain connects a clear trigger with a certain behaviour. This cue is a reminder that tells your brain it’s time to move.

Routine: Once your brain picks up on the cue, you automatically start doing a certain set of things. This habit could get so strong that the behaviour is automatic and doesn’t need much thought.

Reward: After doing the thing, you feel good emotionally or physically. This reward strengthens the cue-routine loop, which means that the behaviour is more likely to happen again when the cue is seen again.

Let’s think of something that happens every day. When there is a new message on Slack, you will hear a “ping.” Being able to hear the sound makes you automatically open the chat app. The feeling of accomplishment that follows is satisfying, like quickly getting rid of a notice or answering a very important message. Over time, you start to auto-check your messages as they come in, which takes your attention away from your work and makes it take longer to finish.

Tips on how to spot bad habits

You can slowly make some habits a part of your daily life. They may be so ingrained in the way you do your job that it’s hard to take a step back and see how it’s hurting your growth and well-being. Here are four signs that you have bad habits:

Interruptions in your work:

Always, things take longer than they should, or you’re always running late. Behaviours that make it hard to concentrate include checking your email too often, using your phone to pass the time, or talking too much at work.

Tiredness, both physical and mental:

You might feel tired all the time for no clear reason if you have bad habits, like staying up late all the time, eating too much junk food, or not exercising enough.
Lower levels of satisfaction: If things you used to enjoy feel like work, it could be because of a bad habit that is draining your energy. For instance, constantly doing more than one thing at once might make you less interested in fun work tasks.

Behaviours that encourage avoidance:

Skipping over certain duties or jobs on a regular basis is a sign of an avoidance habit. This could be a way to deal with difficulty or avoid doing something that makes you feel bad. If you put off important jobs in favour of easier ones, you might be putting off things because you are afraid of failing or trying too hard to be perfect.

You can learn how to break a bad habit by noticing the signs or asking for help. Taking the initiative to figure out these bad habits will lead to a more balanced life and work growth.

How important it is to break habits

Bad habits can hurt your job, your relationships, and your ability to learn and grow if you don’t get rid of them. Getting rid of bad habits isn’t just a way to get more done. It’s about making your health better in general. Getting rid of a bad habit will make you happier at work for the following reasons:

Keeps work reputation in good shape:

Getting rid of bad habits on your own helps you become a more reliable team member. Trust grows when you show that you are actively learning and improving yourself. It can also lead to better chances and bigger responsibilities.

Keeps your body safe:

Prioritising good sleep, regular exercise, and a well-balanced diet can help your physical and mental health. Getting into these good new habits can give you more energy, help you concentrate better, and improve your general health.

More work getting done:

Switching between tasks often can slow you down. Instead, set aside time to focus on one job at a time, or take breaks from your cell phone when you need to. By making your goals clear and cutting down on distractions, you can get more done and enjoy your free time more.

More confidence in yourself:

It’s not easy to break old habits and start new ones. When you change your behaviour for the better, you’ll feel good about yourself and be ready to take on new tasks.

7 tips on how to break a bad habit

It’s not easy to figure out how to break a bad habit. If you know yourself and are determined, you can change bad habits for the better. These seven easy steps will help you change bad habits into good ones:

1. Know why you want to make a change.

Looking at yourself is the first step to figuring out how to break a bad habit. Figure out why you want to change a habit. You might want to do better at work, fix problems in your relationships, or boost your confidence.

No matter what it is, knowing the “why” behind your journey will keep you going when things get tough. You should write it down so you can remember why you want to break a bad habit.

2. Take note of the change process

Change comes slowly. Set up barriers to stop negative self-talk and get over setbacks, and remember to enjoy the little wins along the way.

3. If you can’t see it, you can’t remember it

Lessen your exposure to things that make you do the bad habit. If it’s hard for you to stop using social media, move your phone to a different room or remove apps from your home screen. Do not look at your phone while you are working. Put it and any other things that might confuse you in a different room.

4. Make it look bad.

Cut off the prize before it starts. By linking the bad results to the bad habit, you might be able to control it better. For instance, when you put things off, tell yourself of the free time you’ll lose or the stress you’ll feel.

5. Make things hard

Making bad habits harder to do will help them stay away. Don’t keep bad food at home or at the office if you want to cut down on snacking on it. The extra work it takes to feed your bad habit might stop you.

6. Swap bad things for good ones

Instead of trying to quit a bad habit all at once, you should focus on making a good new habit in its place. A more natural transition can be made by adding a positive behaviour that takes up the same amount of room as the negative behaviour.

For example, if you don’t want to check social media right before bed, you could meditate or read for a few minutes instead. This method will help you promote good results and rewards.

7. Ask for help

You can get the help you need from a professional coach who specialises in either job or behaviour coaching. With their help, you can move forward more quickly by making action plans that are based on reality and holding yourself accountable to move forward.

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