7 Habits to Ditch in 2020 to Boost Productivity

Adding healthy habits to your daily routine can transform your life but removing unhealthy habits that aren’t serving you can really give you the boost you need to get started on your self-development journey in 2020.

Conventional wisdom would have you believe that removing something has got to be easier than adding something new. Here’s the catch, not by a long shot. Because some of the habits that we have been repeating for years, day after day, can almost become part of our identity. Instead of looking at some of these patterns as patterns, we start associating our sense of self with these habits and they really end up hurting our growth as a result.

A little quote that might encourage you to embark on this quest right away says this —

What we do now echoes in eternity.

— Marcus Aurelius

So here are some of the habits you might want to bid farewell in 2020 no matter how much they “feel like you”.

1. The “I don’t feel like it” excuse

Yep, let’s face it. We’re all guilty of this one and it is what it is, an excuse to indulge in behaviors that we know end up hurting us rather than helping us. Now it’s up to behavioral psychologists to understand why we, being the rational creatures that we are, would ever fall for an excuse like this but a friend of mine put it very poetically —

Why do I beat myself with a hammer? Because it feels so good when I stop.

Yikes, indeed and yet we carry on with our self-destructive habits like it’s no big deal. Now here’s the bad news. According to Mel Robbins, the best-selling author of the book The 5 Seconds Rule, it’s a fool's errand to wait around for the time when you’ll feel like it. Because the bottom line is she says —

You’re never gonna feel like it.

And if you’re never going to feel like it, you’re never going to get it done. It’s just a simple trick that our mind plays on us, such a lousy one at that. I highly encourage anyone who struggles with this to go and check out Mel Robbin’s book where she lays out eloquently on how to tackle this pattern. It’s backed by science as she proclaims and personally, it…