10 Bad Habits You Should Drop from Your Daily Routine

A person consists of their own habits. When you allow bad habits to control you, they will greatly hinder your success. The challenge lies in the fact that bad habits are insidious, as they slowly creep into your life without you noticing the damage they cause.

“Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken,” said Warren Buffett.

Getting rid of bad habits requires a great deal of self-control, but studies indicate that it is worth the effort. Self-control has great effects on success.

Psychiatrists at the University of Pennsylvania, Angela Duckworth and Martin Seligman, conducted a study to measure the intelligence quotients (IQ) of university students and their self-control when they entered university. Four years later, they looked at the students' transcripts and final grades and found that self-control was twice as important as having a high IQ.

Bad Habits You Should Drop from Your Daily Routine

Self-control requires developing good habits and getting rid of bad ones. It can be the basis for strong work ethics and high productivity. Just like muscles, self-control needs to be strengthened through training. You can practice self-control by getting rid of the following bad habits:

1. Using a computer or phone while in bed

This is one of the worst habits because people do not realize how harmful it is to sleep and productivity. Short blue light waves play an important role in determining mood, energy level, and sleep quality.

A significant amount of these waves are present in the morning sun's rays. When your eyes are exposed directly to blue light, your body stops producing melatonin, the hormone that induces sleep, causing you to feel more energetic.

The blue light fades in the afternoon, allowing the body to release melatonin, which makes you feel sleepy again. The brain becomes more sensitive to blue light by evening because it will no longer be expecting it. 

Most of the electronics that we use in the evening (computer or mobile phone) emit short-wave blue light directly into the face. Exposure to this light hinders the secretion of melatonin and affects the ability to sleep and its quality.

We are all aware of how disastrous sleep deprivation can be. The best thing you can do is to avoid using these devices after dinner. It's okay for some people to watch TV as long as they sit far from the screen.

2. Rushing to use the Internet

Immersing in a task requires 15 minutes of continuous concentration. When you achieve this immersion, you experience a joyful state of increased productivity called “flow.” According to studies, people who are in a state of flow are five times more productive than those who are not.

You are going to need to focus for an additional 15 minutes in order to get back into the flow state when you exit work applications to check the news, Facebook, the scores of a match, or anything else. If you frequently log in and out of work applications, the entire work day will pass without you reaching your maximum productivity.

3. Checking your phone while talking to others

Nothing annoys people like sending a text message or checking your phone in the middle of a conversation. When you commit to a conversation, you should focus all of your energy on that conversation. It will become more enjoyable and effective when you allow yourself to immerse yourself in it.

4. Quickly responding to notifications

Multiple notifications are a productivity nightmare. Studies have shown that checking your phone and email frequently will cause a decrease in productivity. You might feel that checking every message or email you receive achieves some kind of productivity, but this is not the case.

Instead of rushing to respond to every notification you receive, accumulate the SMSs and emails you receive and check them all at a specific time. For example, you could respond to your emails every hour. This way of working is proven to enhance productivity.

5. Approving when you must refuse

A study conducted at the University of California in San Francisco showed that having difficulty saying “no” means you are more likely to become stressed, exhausted, and frustrated, leading to poor self-control.

Refusal is certainly a huge challenge for many. The word “no” is powerful and expressive, and you should not be afraid to use it. Emotionally intelligent people refrain from saying things like "I don't think I can do that" or "I'm not sure about it" when it's time to say "no," as doing so implies respecting your existing obligations.

Refusal offers you an opportunity to successfully complete your obligations. So, keep in mind that refusal is one of the skills of self-control. It will shield you from the bad consequences of taking on too many responsibilities, which will improve your self-control later on.

6. Thinking about toxic people

Our lives are filled with toxic people who can infiltrate our lives and affect us negatively. Every time you find yourself thinking about a toxic coworker or someone who irritates you, you can practice being grateful for the presence of a positive person in your life.

Moreover, a lot of people in your life deserve your attention. While your life is full of people who are important to you, you definitely do not want to occupy your mind with people who do not matter to you.

7. Multitasking during meetings

You should always give your full attention to everything you do, especially during meetings. Even if the meeting doesn't require your full attention, you still need to make the most of it. During meetings, multitasking gives the impression that you are superior to other people.

8. Gossip

Gossipy people derive their happiness from the misery of others. At first, it might be fun to see the personal or practical mistakes committed by others.

However, over time, it becomes exhausting, makes you feel disgusted with yourself, and causes harm to others. People have many positive and enjoyable things that you can learn from them instead of wasting time talking about their mistakes and misfortunes.

Eleanor Roosevelt once said, “Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss.”

9. Postponing work until you ensure success

Most writers spend long hours brainstorming to come up with the characters and plots of their books. They also write many pages that they know will not be part of the actual book. However, they do this because they know that ideas need time to develop.

Our thinking gets paralyzed when it is time to start working because we know that our ideas are not perfect and what we produce might not be good.

However, if you don't start and don't give your ideas enough time to mature, you can't expect to produce something truly amazing. Author Jodi Picoult emphasizes the importance of avoiding perfection by saying, “You might not write well every day, but you can always edit a bad page. You can't edit a blank page.”

10. Comparing yourself to others

You will never be happy if your sense of fulfillment comes from comparing yourself to other people. When you are proud of something you have done, don't let other people's opinions or their successes take away from your own satisfaction.

You should never compare yourself to other people, even though it is nearly impossible to never care about what they think. You should view their opinions of you as exaggerated since your self-worth stems from within you, regardless of what they think or do.

Regardless of what people may think of you at any given time, the one thing that is certain is that you are not as good or bad as they claim.

In Conclusion

You can enhance your self-control and eliminate bad habits that can paralyze your career by exercising self-control to break these bad habits.