Habits affect our energy level. Habits ultimately dictate our lives. The things we do on a daily basis are what create our reality, and bad habits create a terrible reality.
Science shows us that changing our habits and thoughts can be difficult, considering we repeat 85% of the same thing day in, day out.
That only leaves 15% to change, if we are mindfully aware of change. Alongside knowing what we need to change vs. what we assume we should change.
With the rise of technology, the abundance of information being thrown at us on a daily basis and the constant perception that we need to do more, be more and earn more it make habit forming an overwhelming task.
The problem we all face is that there is so much going on that we sometimes lose sight of what is important to maintain our health, grow our businesses and thrive rather than simply being ‘busy’.
So you may be making your life harder than it needs to be. As I mentioned at the beginning, it’s your actions and your decisions each day that influence how much energy and focus you have on a daily basis.
And you may be spending too much energy on habits which aren’t useful.
So let’s look at 15 daily habits you may be doing that are potentially doing more harm than good:
1. You Never Follow Through With Tasks On Hand
Are you a talker or a doer?
Whether you are doing admin, packing your bag, editing a client ’s project, making a sales call, etc. If you don’t bother doing the tasks required, then you will struggle to ever make any significant progress.
The problem is that the more often you repeat this behaviour, the more it becomes engrained into your subconscious that not finishing tasks is the norm and acceptable. Which won’t help if ensuring progression is part of your goal.
Therefore, you want to make sure you make your goals realistic and attainable.
For more on this topic, check out this previous Filmmaking Lifestyle article.
2. You Ride The Bus Instead Of Running With It
Maybe you are taking the back seat and not getting involved in the most important elements of your business.
You are hoping someone else does the running for you whilst you take a seat. At first, this might sound quite nice. But, of course, it’s about as close to progress as a laying in bed all day.
Remember to build what your business you need to be aware of everything going on. That includes the boring stuff which matters most such as sales and accounts.
Be sure you are running with your bus until you are in a position to enjoy the ride.
3. Lack Of Sleep
You are possibly working at 100mph. Maybe you don’t organise yourself each day and as a result you forget to make time to restore your health each night with vitally important sleep.
If you weren’t aware, sleep is essential for recovery from everything that we do. It’s our bodies chance to rest up on everything we’ve done in the day.
On top of that, it allows our conscious mind to switch off and the creative areas of our brain to kick in. Which, from a video business perspective, is essential to ensure that what we are producing is our best work.
If you’re interested, check out this article on the intricacies of why sleep is essential.
4. Consistent Negative Thoughts
Perhaps in the past your business didn’t thrive and you lost money. Perhaps you still use that as an excuse for why your current endeavours might not be playing out the way you hoped.
The trouble, now, is that you’ve allowed negativity to trump positivity.
The longer you are in a negative state of mind, the less motivated and creative you will be.
This won’t just effect you short term, your clients and your business will be effected. And not in a way which is of use to you.
5. You’re A Perfectionist
Perfectionism, at its root, is the insistence in always being right, always having it your way and wanting to do it the way you want all the time.
Perfection isn’t attainable, sadly.
It doesn’t matter how much you want it to be. The reality is things can always be improved and you can find errors in everything.
Perfectly imperfect is a more effective mindset and approach to live your life by.
6. You Check Your Phone For Notifications Every 5 Seconds
Don’t worry, the world will still be here by the time you get back from doing your task at hand.
As far as distractions and procrastination, social media is 99 % of people ’s problem today. We feel that if we don’t look at our phones for a couple of days, we will miss something critical.
The constant addiction to checking for notifications digs into productive time, where you could be working on things which actually matter.
Avoid continually looking at your phone. Here are a few solutions:
- Turn it off,
- put it on quiet mode.
- put it in ‘airplane’ mode.
- put it in another room, so that you can’t even see it light up (even that is a distraction).
7. You Rely On Quick Pick Me Ups
Coffee and sugar have become your best friend.
Useful in the spur of the moment. However, your lack of organization results in you relying on the wrong fuel for your body.
Not only will your physique change unfavourably, but you will find you struggle to focus, your energy dips and you wrestle with maintaining any focus on the task at hand.
Ditch (or cut back on) stimulants like coffee and sugar.
8. Your Environment Is Rubbish
Where do you work?
Maybe by yourself at home, in an office away from home, or even at the local coffee shop. Wherever it is, you need to ask yourself if it’s a productive environment or an energy draining one.
This links back to daily habit point #4: if your environment is an energy draining environment, then you need to reconsider where you are working from.
Check out this interesting article on why a good working environment is key to a productive and efficient day.
9. You Always Work
You must give yourself a chance to chill out and recover.
Remember, your body needs a chance to rest up and to enjoy the fruits of your labour.
Not only that, but similar to how sleep is important, when we chill out it gives our brain a chance to switch off and recover. And we give our energy levels a chance to restock.
Working crazy long weeks month after month, year after year, without any time off is bad. There’s only so many 100 hour weeks you can sustain in a row, and most top business people will tell you that.
Yes, working on important and time specific projects like a madman for a couple of weeks is fine. But ensure you take time off and enjoy the fruits of your labor from time to time.
10. You’re A ‘yes Man’
You can’t help but say ‘yes’ to every single thing thrown your way. You agree to help everyone, you never miss an invitation to a party, do favours for everyone.
You need to try saying ‘yes’ to yourself more often and ‘no’ to everyone else.
All these small ‘yeses’ that you are giving out to people is chipping away at your productive time. As Tim Ferriss advises, turn meetings into phonecalls. And phone calls into emails. And emails into delegation (or ignore them).
https://youtube.com/watch?v=whWbM61I9wA
11. You Forget You Have Two Ears And One Mouth
You have two ears for a reason. You have two ears so that you can listen to twice as much as you speak.
For instance, in your video business, your clients give you the bullet points of what they need and want.
Like in negotiation, when going through project briefs, listening is
12. You Don’t Actually Want To Do Whatever You Are Doing
This could be your reality. However harsh it may seem.
Perhaps you are telling yourself a lie that you want to do whatever you are currently doing. It’s like when you used to sit at the back of History classes at school and had no interest in being there.
If you don’t like it you will struggle to do it. Especially with any momentum and significance.
Think long and hard. Do some soul searching. Are you doing what you want to be doing?
If not, then think about an exit strategy. Life is too short.
13. You Don’t Get Outside
The great outdoors is very powerful for our body’s physiology. And our energy level.
The outdoors can do a lot of beneficial things for us, such as improving our mood, decreasing stress, increasing our ‘happy’ chemicals and allowing us to remain in touch with nature.
As health and fitness guru Mark Sisson writes, working outside can be key to stress alleviation and attention restoration.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=8fvxiQ9pCkA
14. There Is No Self-development
You are busy doing, working on your business, running your kids about and doing lots of ‘things.’ However, you lack any direction and longterm plan.
Reading, meditating, listening, exercising, breathing, and taking time to rest are all essential for your growth.
It doesn’t have to take a spiritual form. This means you don’t necessarily need to sit on the top of a mountain pretending to be Buddha. Although that’s cool, too.
Self-development is simply a chance for you to allow your life (and body) to develop in whatever shape or form you want outside of busy stressful work.
15. No Reflection Time
How far have you come so far?
How successful has your business been?
How much have you learnt and seen?
We are all obsessed with chasing the next big thing. We never take the time to sit still and smell the roses after we have grown them.
Or, on the other hand, we never reflect on our current situation and keep digging ourselves into a hole. This then opens up a bunch of other potential issues if we don’t wake up to see what we are doing.
Energy Level — In Conclusion
Some of the above bad habits may be appropriate to you, some of them may not. What is most important is that you identify which ones are becoming a problem. Then once you become aware you can implement necessary steps to change them.
Let us know which energy level habit resonates the most with you and what you plan on doing about it in the comments below.
