Book Review John Hayes Book Review John Hayes

Review of Tiny Habits: Small Changes that Change Everything

 Author: BJ Fogg, PhD

Pages: 306

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Publication date: 2020

Three Take-Aways / Actions

  1. Set me up for success but setting tiny habits that are extremely low

  2. Celebrate immediately after each success

  3. Remind me that my bad habits are not character flaws, just bad behaviors that need to be adjusted.

 Rating 4.5 / 5

 BJ Fogg, a Stanford University Ph.D., used his extensive research to develop a methodology to creating lasting, sustained change. His Tiny Habits method espouses the approach of setting tiny, small behaviors that, through repetition, and celebrations can grow to more significant and more impactful change. He gives the example of building a flossing habit by celebrating flossing one tooth a day. 

 His Tiny Habits recipe is:

 After I ….. I will ……. To wire the Habit, I will immediately celebrate by ….

 

BJ’s approach and mindset are to never personalize your habits but rather be open to adjusting your approach to get what you want out of the Habit and behavior.  

 He shies away from using willpower. Using the action/celebration chain and not willpower will drive change. He argues that willpower takes too much effort and adds unnecessary friction to the process.  

 To BJ, Motivation and Ability are the critical factors in determining the success of the behavior becoming repeated. You need to increase motivation and or ability to get the action outside the Action Line. Motivation and ability are complimentary. The amount you have of one affects the amount you need of the other. 

  

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Another critical facet BJ offers is the no behavior happens without a prompt. And the most essential prompts are action prompts. Prompts are imperative and vital in developing positive behaviors and habits and stopping unwanted ones.  

 BJ is all about striving for improvement and consistency and not perfection. Don’t get into a burst or bust situation. Consistent execution of your prompt, habit/behavior, and celebration will reinforce and grow your habits.  

 The action prompt needs to be precise as possible to help reduce the inherent friction. You want to reduce the need to think about what the prompt COULD be. You want to make it almost automatic. Positive emotions (built through celebrations) make the behavior even intuitive.

BJ also notes that hope and fear push against each other, and the net is your motivation. Works towards increasing your hope and reducing your fears.  

 In the end, habit creation is about mindset. Here are four successful keys to a great mindset:

  1. Be open, flexible, and curious about the possibilities.

  2. Lower your expectations for success

  3. Celebrate every success

  4. Change your process, don’t personalize your actions / bad habits.

 You can’t force change on others. 

 When working with others, you need to help others do what they already want to do; you are influencing others, not trying to force change.

 This is a great book and worth your time. In the end, after making tiny Habits, you should be able to ask yourself, “I now see me as the kind of person who…..”

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Book Review: Lead Yourself First - Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude

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Book: Lead Yourself First - Inspiring Leadership Through Solitude

Author(s): Raymond M Kethledge & Michael S Erwin

Pages: 188

Copyright: June 17, 2017

Rating out 4 of 5

Buy or Rent: Get it from the Library

Summary

The authors' fundamental premise is that solitude is critical to your ability to be successful—the ability to set time for and use solitude as a skill to move you forward. The intentional focus on solitude can be compared to a slight variation on mindfulness. The authors define solitude as: "A subjective state of mind when the mind is isolated from input from other minds!" Kethledge and Erwin also describe solitude as disciplined thought.

The book uses historical figures and events to depict different types of solitude and the resulting successes. The areas of solitude include introspection, self-consensus (negative example), self-awareness, analytical clarity, clarity.

They argue that solitude allows you to reflect while others are reacting. Solitude will enable you to release the pressure gauge and open the mind to both intuition and analytical clarity. If you can honestly reflect on yourself, you can achieve grounding.

Final Thoughts

The book almost reads like a novel. The book makes an excellent case for why you need to include solitude in your life actively. I will become intentional about solitude.

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Improve your Weakest Link

Should you improve on your strengths and ignore your weaknesses?  Absolutely not.  I say you spend 70% of your energy on your strengths and 30% on improving your weaknesses.

 When we think of weakness, many think in terms of physical strength.  I like the Gallup definition of weakness as “anything that gets in the way of your success.”  We all have weaknesses. 

 Seth Godin has a great post where he argues you can make your greatest improvement by focusing on the “laggards.”  This has a direct application to you personally.  He has some mathematical examples the prove his point.

 Here are the reasons I go with the 70-30 split.

  • Focusing too much on your weaknesses, you risk impacting your self-confidence, enthusiasm, and overall performance in life.  Don’t drive yourself to the negative, unproductive mindset.  It would be best if you stayed in the productive growth mindset.

  •  You have strengths that can actually directly improve your weaknesses.  Do you not give up easily?  Do you have an infinite mindset?  These can be great attributes to use against areas of weakness.

  • Focusing energy on your weaknesses is aided by a unit view that Career Buzz has in that “maybe your weaknesses are also strengths or have a corresponding strength.  By focusing on your weaknesses, you are actually equally improving a strength.  Do you view persistence as a weakness as you don’t know when to quit?  Maybe working on identifying the right time to quit will give you the skill to understand when you are close to a breakthrough and should keep persisting?

  • Don’t completely ignore your weaknesses as they can’t be completely ring-fenced.  Weaknesses can bleed over into other areas of your life.  Just like strengths bleed over into other areas of your life, weaknesses can as well. 

  • They may be holding you back in areas of your life that are critical and preventing you from achieving your ultimate life’s vision.

When you jump into the 30% of focusing on your weaknesses, here are some helpful tips to remain productive:

  • You are not your weaknesses.  Don’t personalize them to the point they define you. 

  • Detach from your weaknesses – view them independently and objectively as something that can be either ignored (yes, that is okay or improved on).

  • Truly believe that you can improve your weaknesses.  Ask yourself What If?  What if I can improve X?  What would my life be like?  After asking What if and truly believing that improvement is possible, you can move to improve it? 

  • You can improve it; you believe it now; just put together a plan or system to move you towards improvement.  Set metrics, track progress, and constantly adjust your course to make the progress you want.

  •  Remember to celebrate the victories along the way.  Don’t wait until you have completely solved the nut before celebrating.

 These tips should help you move forward by focusing more on your strengths while not ignoring and being held back too much by your weaknesses.

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6 ways that Nozbe can increase your productivity

 
 

There are thousands of productivity tools out there.  Nozbe is the tool I use to track and complete my projects and tasks.  Nozbe helps me get things done.  Here are six ways that Nozbe can increase your productivity.  


1. Nozbe helps you focus on what you need to get done.  Not what you want to or should get done but rather what you need to get done.  You can quickly filter down to right must get done today.  Use the "Priority" Star rating and view and only these tasks will be visible.  Use the Edit button and you can arrange the tasks in priority order.  Then burn down the list from top to bottom.  I try to have only 3 items a day that must get down.  By filtering on "work" or "home" labels I can show the appropriate 3 focus items.


2. Capture all the projects that need to get done - Following the classic and proven GTD approach you can capture all your projects and feel good about having everything in one spot.  For those tasks that don't need multiple steps (projects) to complete just use a "Home" or "Work" project to group these tasks in a "project" and get them out of your Nozbe inbox.  


3. Quickly send thoughts, tasks or projects to Nozbe through email.  Nozbe handles the important task of getting thoughts immediately recorded when you think of them.  You can set up a unique email address that allows you to send items to your in-box.  Set this as a contact in your email application and the address comes right up in your email composer.  A great way to get everything in one spot quickly. 


4. Nozbe is multi-platform.  There are IOS, Mac, Windows, Android versions that sync across platforms.  Regardless of your platform you have your tasks, projects and areas of focus with you everyone.  


5. Nozbe is easy to get started using.  You spend your time getting things done not fiddling with your productivity app.  The tool can be configured as easy or as complicated as you want.  A quick set up of projects and categories and you are ready to go.  Then you can refine your Nozbe configuration as you use the tool. 


6. Nozbe can be used in a team environment to assign and track projects accross a team.  Everyone is synced to what is critical and the most important things are set up to get done.  


7. Nozbe integrates and works well with other tools such as Dropbox and Evernote.  The linking of files and notes in both these applications within Nozbe is awesome.  This really ups your productivity game. 

Look for a future post that describes in detail how I use Nozbe to get things done. 

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The Power of 30 Minutes to Change Your Life

30 Minutes
30 Minutes

A mindless TV sitcom, A bowl of ice cream, a cigar... Things you can do in 30 minutes. What if you spent 30 minutes a day to change your life by just moving?

On July 1, 2014 I had enough of how I felt, looked and I was seriously concern over where this was all taking me. 51 years old and over 230 pounds I decided I was going to do something about it.

Over the years I had crafted complex workout and exercise plans (typically around Jan 1) that I inevitably stopped or was unable to follow. And like many people, that led to the feeling of failure from which I never got back on the horse. Not anymore.

On July 1, 2014 I decided and committed to moving for 30 minutes a day; every day. No elaborate exercise plans with heart rate, distance, effort goals; just moving 30 minutes everyday; no matter what. I wasn't even concerned about changing my eating habits just moving for 30 minutes.

I was inspired by James Clear who wrote a post called How to Stop Procrastinating on Your Goals by Using the “Seinfeld Strategy”  where he mentioned Jerry Seinfeld's commitment strategy of writing every day. Jerry built a simple system that he focused on which had nothing to do with results, only the process.

The way I viewed it there are really very few failure points (only one) and a clear easy way to measure progress. I set up a quick Google Docs spreadsheet and tracked day, time moving, location, and description, and a counter for keeping track of the consecutive days moving. Nothing more.

This started out as walking for 30 minutes a day (which my two dogs are thoroughly loving). I just walked for 36 straight days and really enjoyed it. But what started to happen was remarkable. I started to feel better both physically but mentally as I had kept up with an exercise plan for 36 days and I wasn't overworked, sore, burned out. I felt great. It was not always easy, I can remember hustling down to the workout room in my Sydney AZ hotel at 11:00 at night to get in 30 minutes on the treadmill after an all day flight into town.

Now that I was having success with an easy workout plan I started to development a healthy mindset. I started to wonder how I could move in other ways. So after a year I have moved by:

Playing Ice HockeyWhite Water RaftingKayakingSwimmingWeight TrainingCyclingRunningJump RopingLateral X machineKettlebellsRoller BladingSplitting Wood

I have been lucky enough to do my 30 minute move in a lot of different placesDayton, OhioCharlotte, NCRaleigh, NCNew York, NYNashville, TNLondon, UKParis , FRSydney, AZDubai, UABManila, Philippines

In just the first year I have lost 23 pounds and dropped 4 inches off my pants size, and I feel much better. With the successful reinforcement of my success I naturally started looking at my eating process and have slowly started to change those processes a well.

TakeawaysWhat if I expanded this approach into other areas of my life? Would it work? I put a process in place to track reading and media consumption per day. Through print books and audible books I consume at least 20 minutes per day of great content. This can be fiction, non-fiction, whatever but I set up the system so that I get 20 minutes of great content daily. No TV doesn't count for me.

What could you do at work with this systematic approach? How about making sure you give 10 compliments or signs of gratitude for people a work a day?

What about spending quality time with your family or a significant other X times / minutes a day or week or month? I am a firm believer that what you focus on improves and if you put the system in place you will move forward. Make the barrier to success so low that you can miss it and you will quickly see the momentum these systems can generate.

How can you use this approach? Let us know in the comments below.

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