Habits & Practices, Part 2

You may have noticed that my last post was over three months ago (March 1, 2012, to be exact, but who’s counting?)  I’ve noticed, but that’s because I’ve been so busy not writing it.  This is only a problem because, well, back at the beginning of the year, I had set the intention of writing one blog post a week.  So that means that for the ensuing 13 weeks,  I fell off–and stayed off–the proverbial horse.

And what was the title of that long-ago post, you ask?  Habits & Practices.  Holy cow.  Richard Bach wasn’t kidding when he said, “You teach best what you most need to learn.” Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah (1977).

So, here I am, back in the saddle.  And I want to tell you how I did it:  I took action.  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

What are habits and practices anyway?  What’s the difference between them?  Sometimes not much, it turns out. You can say, “It’s my practice to read the paper every morning.”  Or you can just as easily say, “It’s my habit to read the paper every morning.”  In this case, they both mean the same thing.

But here’s how they differ.  A good habit is a regular action that you take, like balancing your checkbook every month on a specific day, or flossing your teeth (just the ones you want to keep) every night.  A best practice is a documented process that will bring about the highest quality and excellent results, like a checklist specifying the necessary steps for how to balance your checkbook.

You can develop a habit to get a practice done, like scheduling a regular time on your calender to write your weekly blog post.  You can also develop a practice to adopt new habits or strengthen existing ones.  That’s the beauty and fluidity and inter-relationship between good habits and best practices.

But, and here’s the thing that got me out of the 13-week doldrums,  I think that habits and practices are only two legs of the three-legged stool of getting things done.  The third leg is what has been eluding me these past three months: take action! 

It’s not like I didn’t have the time to write, it’s not like I didn’t have a fabulous technical VA to push it out to my list for me, it’s not like I didn’t know how to put a post together.  No, there was an intangible, yet essential piece missing and now I know what it was: just do it! (Do I owe Nike anything for using that?)

What got in the way was this idea in my head that if I couldn’t do it perfectly, then I couldn’t do it at all.  And here’s the kicker:  I don’t even know, couldn’t tell you if you held a gun to my cat’s head, what “perfect” even looks like!  So talk about a double-bind.

So here’s wishing you a comfortable seat on the stool as you move forward in your life and in your business.  All the best.