Getting Rid of Destructive Habits

Greetings! 👋

I recently returned from a business trip where I got to meet my team mates in China, as well as other brilliant designers from other teams that I have had the opportunity to work with—It was fantastic! As it’s my first time in China, my experience was so eye-opening, especially when interacting with the technology there.

Prior to this trip, an incident (not work) happened between me and someone I know, and his actions caused a rift between us. While assessing the situation I realised that this person possess a lot of destructive habits. The reason why I’m sharing this is because I always find that there are opportunities to learn in other's mistakes, habits and actions. At the same time, I believe the way we handle our personal lives, sometimes trickle into our work life—and that could affect the way we think and behave in a professional setting too.

To give some context, I have known this person for more than half my life—we met each other in school. We have discussed about his habits before and even tried to work it out to instil new habits, introduce new ways of thinking, but nothing seemed to work. After years of guidance, I realised I had unknowingly put together a list of destructive habits that I learnt about, that I would like to share with you today.

Blame Game

This is one of the most destructive habits a person can have. Not taking responsibility of our own actions can cause a chain reaction of things to happen. These are just a few to note:

• Loss of trust

• Repeated mistakes

• No growth

• Damaged reputation

• Strained relationships

• And more..

With the lack of responsibility, we can’t learn from mistakes if we don’t first acknowledge that we made it. It could be something minor that could seem harmless, but it could snowball into a massive destructive habit. Let me give you an example—when I first started working, I took every free time that I had as an opportunity to learn. It could be riding the train to work—instead of listening to music, I would read a book. Or when I was taking a run in the park, I would utilise that time to listen to an audiobook or podcast on something I was keen to learn or grow in that area.

After discussing with him during one of our catch-ups, we actually identified that he needed to read a book that would help him to understand how to work towards his goals. After a few months, when I asked him about his progress, he blamed it on his work being too busy. When asked if he utilised his time during his commute to work, he said he would play games to relax instead as his work was too stressful. I wrote a post before about making choices, and this was pretty much about making choices. However, he always blamed it on the lack of time, or that his circumstances at home did not allow him to do so. Even after moving out into his own home, his circumstances changed but he continued blaming other things instead of taking responsibility for his own actions and decisions. Granted, in life, bad things do happen and sometimes we can’t control those things. However, for the things he had control over, he just never took the opportunity to grow. That, in essence, is the cost of inaction on his part.

Comprehension

In previous newsletters, we discussed about communication where we dove into articulating our ideas. The other side of communication is comprehension. As someone who builds experience for others, I have always wondered, “how do I need to articulate so that the party on the receiving end of my communication actually understands it?” I have to note that while this is not a habit, I find that this is one of the factors that actually are quite important when trying to get rid of destructive habits. I’ll give you an example—for quite a while, he was struggling at work with some of his colleagues who would make snide remarks about his achievements. On my end, I told him to “stand tall and be proud, and ignore your haters”—as any friend would. The next thing I knew, he started being arrogant at work. Now, if you do a quick search on Google, you would see 2 definitions of the word proud.

What I mentioned about “standing tall and proud” was more of the first definition, but he took it as the second one. As I assessed the situation if I might have not articulated myself correctly, I thought that he might have not understood clearly what I meant when I said it. In work, we often say that we should design for people who are not that smart about using digital devices, however in this case, it seems that sometimes such exceptional situations do happen. For someone who might have problems with comprehension, what might you do to soften the impact of misunderstandings?

If you have some thoughts on this, please let me know so that I could share this with everyone.

Failure to Follow Through

When seeking advice, he always appeared keen to listen, and it always looked as though he had an epiphany and start writing down notes in his Note app on his iPhone. However, whenever it came down to action, nothing seemed to be done. It felt like he liked getting high on advice, but not acting on it. When asked about the notes he wrote, he always took some time to find it as it was buried on top of his newer notes. For example, I have guided him on how to set himself up for the year—Plan, Set, Review, Iterate & Achieve. He wrote down in his notes what he should do, but then it never got past planning stage. Again, when ask why, he would give the same answers—not sure what to write, what to plan. Or that he was too busy and life got in the way.

How to Get Rid of Them

If we have any of these destructive habits, it would be a good idea to actually take a moment to review and think about how we can slowly move out of these habits. These are habits after all—sometimes we don’t think twice about it as we might even be used to doing it without much thought. Getting rid of destructive habits is not a simple task. It takes considerable effort in ensuring that we do not fall back into these areas. A shift to a growth mindset would mean that we take criticism as a way to improve, identify opportunities to learn, and set good habits in place. As I read and love the book ‘Atomic Habits by James Clear’, he has a good strategy for breaking bad habits and building good ones.

To break bad habits:

• Identify the Cue: Pay attention to the triggers or cues that lead to your bad habit. Understanding what prompts the behaviour can help you interrupt it before it starts.

• Make it Invisible: Reduce exposure to the cues that trigger your bad habit. For example, if you want to stop snacking on unhealthy foods, remove them from your environment so they're out of sight.

• Make it Unattractive: Associate negative consequences with your bad habit to make it less appealing. For instance, visualise the negative effects of smoking every time you feel the urge to light up.

• Make it Difficult: Increase the friction associated with your bad habit. For example, if you're trying to spend less time on social media, delete the apps from your phone to make it harder to access them.

To build up good habits:

• Make it Satisfying: Find healthier alternatives that provide a similar reward to your bad habit. For instance, if you tend to stress eat, try going for a walk or practicing deep breathing exercises instead.

• Habit Stacking: Pair your desired behaviour with an existing habit to make it easier to stick to. For example, if you want to start flossing your teeth, do it immediately after brushing your teeth each night.

• Start Small: Break your habit down into smaller, more manageable steps. Focus on making incremental progress rather than trying to change everything at once.

• Track Your Progress: Keep track of your behaviour to monitor your progress over time. This can help you stay accountable and identify patterns or triggers that you may need to address.

• Stay Consistent: Focus on building habits that you can maintain over the long term. Consistency is key to creating lasting change, so stick to your new habits even when it's challenging.

• Be Patient: Breaking bad habits takes time and effort, so be patient with yourself. Celebrate your successes along the way and don't get discouraged by setbacks.

While I do understand that people reading this are most likely to not have destructive habits, I do think that at times, when we know someone like that, we could think about how we could communicate with them better. Also, once in a while, we all procrastinate. Some of us have more serious habit of procrastination than others. Which is why I recommend Atomic Habits (and you should not procrastinate to read this, really) because building good habits is the way to get rid of bad ones. Continuously improve the way you think and do things.

What I do think it boils down to, might be the way we think (or not think) of ourselves, as well as how much we want to grow, learn and achieve.

Reflect: If you’re mentoring someone whose behaviour or habits closely resembles to this, keep this in mind—If there’s one thing I learnt about being a mentor, is that you don’t just “give up” on the person, but you leave it in their hands to take action. If they don’t, it’s their choice, and you should not blame yourself for the mistakes they have made under your guidance.

Mentor’s Notes

As you might see, this has got nothing much to do with design, but at the same time, it could possibly help in identifying such habits when we perhaps come face to face with it. This has been a long newsletter, so I’ll let you all go for now. If you have any thoughts about this, feel free to hit reply and send them to me. I would love to hear from you!

Take care and until next time,

P.S. Yes, as always, please share it with your friends if you think it’s useful.