When you brush your hair, which hand do you hold the brush in?
(Asking for a friend)
I guess you always start with the same hand – yes?
And when brushing your teeth, which hand do you hold the toothbrush in?
Always the same one, yes?
Question: why do we always do these things the same way? Without thinking?
Because of habits.
It’s how our brain works. It automates the things it regularly does. Which is great – it doesn’t need to waste time re-learning things it already knows. Which is great for routine things like brushing teeth and (I imagine) hair.
But what about something we habitually do at work – like Update Meetings? The ones we have every week. Without thinking. The ones that you hate. That everyone hates.
But the meetings that – despite this hatred – you’ll have again next week.
That’s the problem with habits. They trump everything else. They’re more powerful than logic, emotion… anything.
All of which means…
….for us to permanently improve how we communicate, we must improve our habits – using the three – ISE’s:
- Priorit-ISE – prioritise the habits we should start/stop/continue. What new, good habits should we start doing? What existing, bad ones should we stop doing? What existing ones should we continue?
- Diar-ISE – schedule these Good Habits in the diary. As in, allocate time to doing them. Because, when we schedule things in our diary, we remember to do them. And we have time to do them. But no diary reminders mean we won’t do them
- Social-ISE – involve someone else about your prioritised, diarised plans. Socialise it with them. Ask them to hold you to account. You’re much more likely to achieve something, if you know someone will notice if you don’t
The Action Point from this Tip is kinda obvious – prioritise stuff you should be doing, bang it in the diary and then ask someone to hold you to account.
But it’d be easy to read this, think how wise it is (!) but do nothing about it. Which means that, next Monday, you’ll brush your teeth beautifully; you’ll brush your hair beautifully… and then will go to a terrible Update Meeting. Again.
Action Point
You know what you’re about to read – prioritise, diarise, socialise. Then do it again… and again… and again …
The most successful people I’ve met relentlessly do a handful of critical activities. So let’s be inspired by (ok, copy) them!