Hey, y’all! Brent Perry with Business on Purpose.
A question I came across as I was reading over the weekend…” what habit in your life will yield the highest return?”
And then to take it a step further, how can you make that habit part of your daily routine?
The book is called Win the Day by Mark Batterson.
After you have defined the habit, whatever it may be, Batterson goes on to suggest (in regards to making this habit part of your day to day), he says “the key, no matter what it is, is identifying when and where.”
He goes on to give details of a study that was done in the 1960s involving students at Yale University.
Graduating seniors were educated about the dangers of tetanus and given the opportunity to get a free inoculation at the health center. Despite the fact that it was free and the majority of the students who were polled were convinced they needed to get the shot, only 3 percent followed through and got the vaccine. 3 percent.
Now there was another group of graduating seniors, the test group, that was given the same lecture with one caveat. They were given copies of the campus map with the location of the health center circled. Then they were asked to look at their weekly schedules and figure out when they would get the shot. And you know what… 9 times as many students in this group got inoculated.
Good intentions are good, but they aren’t good enough!
Define the habit. Then define the when and where. Or there is a good chance this habit, which can yield the highest return in your business, will stay just a good intention.
At the beginning of the year, I was working with a client and asked him the same question. He thought about it for a week or so and decided that the habit he saw that would yield an incredibly high return would be reading. Sounds incredibly simple, but he admitted that he hadn’t read a book in almost a year. He had intentions and even had books on his shelf that he had bought last year, but never got around to reading any of them.
Some were books on business. Some on marketing. Some mystery thriller books. Some books for his spirituality. All kinds of books, that he knew would make him a better owner, boss, husband, father, etc. But he never got around to reading them.
So he had defined the habit, it was time to define the when and where.
It was easy for him, he is typically the first person up in house so he can shower and get ready before helping others get out the door as well.
He decided he would wake up 30 minutes earlier each day. Make a cup of coffee. And sit in his favorite chair in the house.
He knew his habit. He decided his when and where and he has been crushing it.
He’s quick to admit that he hasn’t been 100% since he started, but he has already finished 2 books in 2022 and we aren’t even out of January yet.
So what’s your habit? And what is your when and where going to be?
Ask yourself this question over the next week, and see if there is a habit you need to take on that will yield a high return this year.
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