Breaking Bad Habits

In an episode of Breaking Bad the hero is in a store where he notices a young customer buying the components needed to make drugs.  He instantly goes into teacher mode and rather disparagingly points out what he has got wrong.  It is only a little later he realises that he is helping the competition and goes and threatens dire consequences for not respecting his patch.
It's a very realistic incident.  It is a minor thing in terms of the plot, but tells us a lot about the internal state of the lead character.  He still reacts instinctively as he would in his day job.  He might now be a big cheese drug dealer.  But the circuits in his brain are still those of chemistry teacher.

When you move from one stage in life to another you have the same problem.  You can change your job or your business in 24 hours if you put your mind to it.  But changing all the associated habits and outlooks built up over time is a much tougher prospect.

Your subconscious brain needs to be reprogrammed to support who you are now, not who you were a while back.  Left to itself it will drag you backwards.

What can be done to help the process along.

1. Consciously think and review what you are doing.  Your subconscious is a powerful thing, but your conscious brain is still just about in charge.  Give it all the help you can to set the agenda.

2. Write down goals and the actions you need to do to achieve them. You should, hopefully, already know them.  But the exercise of forcing your brain to articulate them will help write over the existing habits that are holding you back.

3. Avoid putting yourself into positions where the old routines have to run.

Those at least are my strategies.

Just a quick example from my own experience.  I have just had a customer ask me to redo a big chunk of work that I had done and that had already been paid for.  I had got a couple of things wrong, but the bulk of the changes were down to them changing something and not having the right procedures in place.  The split was maybe 20:80 towards it being down to them.  I made the changes and decided not to get into an argument about being paid for the work.

I didn't entirely let it slide though.  I did start a set of terms and conditions to address this kind of issue in future, and I planned to ring them up  and talk through my issues.  It was only after I reflected on it that I realised that only the first of those responses was appropriate.  This customer is not likely to be a long term one.  Having an adult relationship with them would be good, but would be even more time and effort for which I wouldn't get paid.   Working on the terms and conditions document on the other hand will pay me dividends in the future if similar situations arise.

So when I reflect on my actions, I realise that I am still treating customers as if I am part of a hierarchy where relationships matter more than short term remuneration and even than actual productivity.  I should have concentrated on the document and put planning what I am going to say to my soon to be former customer out of my head.  Instead, although I have started the document it isn't finished and I have spent a load more time running through in my head just what I am going to say, how I am going to say it and what I need to get out of the conversation with my customer that I have already decided I am not going to have.


Photo credit: Mechanekton via photopin cc