Category Archives for "Business"

How I Used the Tiny Habits Method to Increase Content Creation in One Week

content creation

By Tim Riddle

Many individuals in the marketing world would jump at the chance to increase their content creation.

I own a marketing company and write or review content for clients almost every week. Several years ago, I wrote my first book, and over the past 12 months, I gathered notes, ideas, outlines, etc., for my second one. I tried to find time to write with my busy schedule, but I started to wonder if I loved the idea more than the process.

Before you jump to conclusions and think my tiny habits wrote the words for me, that’s not the purpose of sharing my experience. I did accomplish more than I expected, but the win was what I learned – a repeatable process that I will take with me when I write books 3, 4, 5…as you can tell, it left me with a new level of optimism.

I’ve read or tried almost every hack to improve productivity. But, as I get older, I have a sense of urgency not to waste the remaining time I have to utilize the gifts God has provided.

So, a month ago, I noticed I had a whole week of no travel. I quickly blocked all the mornings on my calendar, intending to make progress on the book. Then, as a Tiny Habits coach, I began brainstorming a few tiny behaviors I could implement to guide my week. But I felt stuck.

I couldn’t wrap my mind around how to write the volume of words I needed to write, focusing on tiny. I was stuck wondering how the habit of “After I sit down at my desk, I will write one sentence” would help me complete a book anytime soon.

But…surprisingly, I had an epiphany by the end of my writing week and uncovered several tiny habits that, although tiny, were the foundation that produced the results.

Here’s a recap of the tiny habits I used.

I wish they all came from my great wisdom as a Tiny Habits coach, but honestly, some of them found me before I found them. It wasn’t until I reflected on the week that I recognized their significance.

First, I used a starter step by blocking my calendar. I recently heard a martial arts instructor talk about the most significant belt you can earn. The assumption is the black belt, but he said it was the white belt. The white belt is the first belt you receive, indicating that you have started the process. You can’t earn a black belt if you don’t start. Great wisdom to implement with habits; remember the value of setting a tiny habits starter step.

Another starter step I utilized was to prepare myself for the challenge spiritually. As a Christ follower, prayer is a core value, so I intentionally spent the weekend praying for the upcoming week’s challenge.

A final starter step was to break down my big goal for the week into smaller ones. For example, my big goal was to write 15,000 words for the week. I broke that down into 3,000 words per day with a minimum of 500 words per hour.

Next, I thought about the time of day that I do my best work. Mornings are best for me, so I decided to specify the time. I am an early riser, but I decided to set the alarm even earlier, at 4 AM this week. To do this, I knew I had to get the rest I needed, so my first tiny habit was to get to bed by 8:30 PM every evening; “After the clock hits 8 PM, I will get ready for bed.”

Ironically, I woke up before the alarm every morning, thanks to my tiny habit of getting to bed early. I started with my version of the Maui habit, “After I wake up, I will thank God for a great day.” Then, I had a quiet time of devotion and prayer to prepare for the day. During this time, I tried to fight off the negative thoughts of, “I can’t do this… I’ll never be able to do this every day this week… I’m an idiot for thinking I can do this.”

At 5 AM, I sat down at my desk. The time of day allowed me to dive in without distractions. Nobody was emailing or calling me at 5 AM, and after a couple of hours of writing, I was deep enough in the process that interruptions didn’t tempt me. However, I put my computer and phone on focus mode for extra security to silence all notifications.

I then set a timer for 45 minutes. My goal was to write for 45 minutes and take a 15-minute break. At the end of every 45 minutes, I would record the number of words I had written. Sometimes it exceeded my target of 500 words, sometimes, it didn’t, but it kept me on track and focused.

At the end of every 45 minutes, I stopped, took a break, thanked God for the words I had written, and asked for clarity, focus, creativity, and motivation to keep going for another 45 minutes.

To end each day, I focused on thankfulness for the completed day and preparation for the next. Each day was different. For example, Monday was filled with anxiety…In the first hour, I only wrote 250 words. Tuesday was better, although I still questioned if I could make it to the end of the week. Wednesday, I experienced what I call the messy middle. It’s that time when you question why, but I kept moving. Thursday, I wrote the most words. Perhaps I could see the end in sight. And Friday, I had to fight against the excitement of getting to the finish line. After a pep talk to stay focused, Friday was the best day regarding the quality of words written.

Here’s a recap of my tiny habit’s recipes:

Starter Steps

  • Block the writing time on my calendar.
  • Spend time in prayer the weekend before.

Tiny Habits

  • After the clock hits 8 PM, I will head to bed.
  • After I wake up, I will thank God for a great day today.
  • After I leave the bedroom, I will head to the sunroom for a time of devotion to set the tone for the day.
  • After my time of devotion, I will go to my office.
  • After I sit down at my desk, I will put my computer and phone in focus mode.
  • After I put my computer and phone in focus mode, I will set my 45-minute timer.
  • After I finish writing for 45 minutes, I will log the number of words I write.
  • After I log the number of words I write, I will take a 15-minute break, thank God for the words written (celebrate), and ask for help for the next 45 minutes.
  • After I finish writing for the day, I will record the total words written and celebrate completing the day.
  • After I lie in bed at night, I will thank God for the day (celebrate) and ask for help the next day.

Disclaimer: The above steps were actually tinier with more specific trailing edges, but you get my point.

Results

Although I am hesitant to share results because the win for me was the journey each day instead of the finish line, in the spirit of celebration, here they are:

Words Written

  • Monday: 3187
  • Tuesday: 3715
  • Wednesday: 3592
  • Thursday: 4092
  • Friday: 3656
  • Total: 18,242

Conclusion

Here’s my takeaway. It felt as if my tiny habits were the pillars that supported my overzealous goal for the week. Without them, my week would have crumbled. My habits were the connecting issue that moved me from step to step. Funny how the difference between success and failure can indeed be tiny.

When I think back to all the times in the past when I wasn’t as successful as I wanted to be, I typically would chalk those times up as failures where I didn’t work hard enough, wasn’t focused enough, wasn’t capable, etc. When in fact, maybe I needed a few tiny pillars as the supporting foundation.

So the win was NOT the total words I tapped out on my keyboard; to stop there would miss the most significant value. The real win was the change I experienced in myself. Now I can’t wait for my next week of writing. Perhaps I should block that week now with a new starter step!

-Tim Riddle

Check out other Tiny Habits Academy blog articles today.

Interested in becoming a Tiny Habits Certified Coach? Learn more today at www.tinyhabitsacademy.com/certification.

Achieve Goals With Tiny Habits and WOOP

achieve goals

By Marcus Degerman, Claus Höfele and Boris König

Looking for a good way to start your morning? Make a habit of thinking about what you can achieve that day and what might stop you. It’s a science-based approach to reaching your goals.

Optimism and mental contrasting

Do you know that beautiful, cozy feeling that a daydream can give us? We think about the next salary increase, imagine the long-awaited vacation on a paradise island, picture six-pack abs, or wish to be famous. As teenagers, we dreamed of what it would be like to date that girl/boy we had long wanted but never dared to speak to. They often didn’t even know we existed. And often they are still unaware of our existence, as many of us still dream without ever taking the first step to make those dreams a reality. We know these people very well: They have many great plans. Yet they never realize them, jumping from one unfinished or never even started project to the next.

The behavior we are talking about here is optimism based on dreams, desires, and positive visions of the future, independent of actual experience. This kind of optimism is the research area of ​​German psychologist Gabriele Oettingen, who teaches in New York and Hamburg. She wanted to know if wishes and positive ideas for the future could also give us enough strength and energy to realize our dreams and achieve our goals.

Most people consider positive thinking as the basis for fulfilling our desires and achieving our goals. True to the motto: If you believe in it hard enough, then you can do it! But it doesn’t work that way. In her research, Gabriele Oettingen shows us that idealizing the future as a strategy to achieve goals does not necessarily work. Here’s an example: when she analyzed the inaugural speeches of US presidents between 1933 and 2009, she found that the more optimistic the speech, the worse the economic performance in the respective term of office.

On the one hand, positive visions of the future make us feel good and help us to get in a good mood. They also allow us to design different possible scenarios for our future. Indulging in daydreams and positive fantasies can be almost addictive because we want to experience these feelings over and over again. On the other hand, that is exactly what might prevent us from mobilizing the necessary energy to work towards our dreams because we have already achieved them in our imagination.

Positive visions and fantasies of the future can help us achieve our goals. However, Oettingen found that it requires a little trick so that we can draw strength and energy from it. This trick is called “mental contrasting.”

What is mental contrasting? 

In contrast to daydreaming, mental contrasting involves considering obstacles that could prevent a possible future. For example, the job you’d really like to have might require heavy studying to have a chance of getting it, but the payoff makes it worthwhile to pursue your goal nonetheless.

Mental contrasting adds the necessary dose of reality to our positive ideas about the future, brings our high-flying fantasies back down to earth, and holds the mirror of reality in front of us.

Gabriele Oettingen was able to prove the success of her method in a number of studies. She and her team not only demonstrated the positive effect of mental contrasting for stress management and better time management for employees in the health sector but also for better learning success in children in elementary school.

Goal setting with WOOP

How could you benefit from these ideas? Based on the principles of mental contrasting, Gabriele Oettingen developed the WOOP method to apply her research in this area to everyday life. Not only is WOOP a more accessible version of these principles, it’s also a really fun name.

WOOP is the abbreviation of these four steps with its associated questions:

Wish – What is an important goal that you want to accomplish? Your wish should be challenging but feasible.

Outcome – What will be the best result from accomplishing your wish?

Obstacle – What is the main obstacle inside you that might prevent you from accomplishing your wish?

Plan – What’s an effective action to tackle the obstacle? Make a when-then plan.

A key aspect of the method is to vividly imagine your desired future in contrast with the obstacles. This way, when an obstacle arises, you are more likely to remember to execute on your plan.

And here is where it gets interesting for Tiny Habits connoisseurs: BJ Fogg’s behavior change method complements the WOOP method perfectly. Whereas WOOP helps you with goal setting, Tiny Habits provides the practical steps to achieve those goals in your daily life.

Two examples will make it more clear how to combine WOOP with Tiny Habits to achieve your goals.

Elizabeth’s Journey to Publish a Children’s Book

Elizabeth’s greatest dream was to write a children’s book. A book with all the stories she has dreamed up since she was young and which she had all stored in her head.

She loved to tell her stories to her nephews and nieces and is often asked to finally put them on paper. She usually smiled and replied that these stories were nothing special and not worth writing down, even though that was her biggest secret wish.

Elizabeth made several unsuccessful attempts to put her stories on paper but always gave up because she thought she had written something banal or bad. This made her afraid of the blank white pages in her notebook. She didn’t realize that the process of writing also requires a certain persistence and routine. It’s hard work, but it can also be fun if you know how. After almost giving up on her plans out of frustration, she found a solution to her problem with the help of Tiny Habits and a writing coach.

With Tiny Habits, she began writing regularly, even if it was just a few lines at first. But she could quickly see her progress and enjoyed what she was doing. Of course, there were setbacks, and she often reworked her lines until she was reasonably happy. The writing coach helped her find her own style and gave her the feedback she needed. Her first book was nearing completion when we asked her about her successful recipes:

I use WOOP every day after I wake up. I have connected it to the Maui Habit that is BJ Fogg’s favorite. After I say “Today is going to be a great day!”, I then ask myself: 

  • What has to happen for today to be a good day?
  • What steps will bring me closer to my long-term goal, the completion of my book? 

This is the Wish in WOOP. Then I pause for a moment and try to imagine how I would feel if my wish came true. Or how I will end the day with this good feeling. What am I feeling? Pride, relief, gratitude. That’s the O. Outcome.

Now it’s time to switch to the Obstacle, and I imagine what can go wrong; distractions, focusing on other things, new stories in my head that I want to continue spinning, spending too much time with emails or on social media, …

No panic. Here is my Plan: small habits for today that will help me move towards my goal:

  • “Whenever I feel like distracting myself, I take three deep breaths.”
  • “After checking my mail, I close the mail program.”
  • “Whenever an idea for a new story pops into my head, I make a quick note in my idea book.”

We look forward to Elizabeth’s book being published. It will bring great joy to many children.

Tom’s approach to being more productive

The second example of how Tiny Habits and WOOP can be easily integrated into everyday life comes from Tom. He works as a tax accountant for an accountancy firm and often has trouble concentrating on work and tends to procrastinate. 

Tom has worked for this company for a long time and has a lot of experience. He is very supportive of his colleagues and is often asked for advice, but this has also caused him to fall further behind on his own duties. As a result, his inbox was overflowing, he was constantly overloaded with his work, and his bosses were becoming increasingly dissatisfied with his work.

This is one of his Tiny Habits recipes that helped him stay focused and complete his tasks: 

  • After I start a new task then I do a WOOP

He takes a pen and paper and writes down the keywords:

  • What do I want to achieve (W)?
  • How will I feel when I achieve it (O)?
  • What can distract me (O)?
  • What will I do when I realize that I am in danger of getting distracted (P)?

This allows him to remember all the little behaviors he wants to get into:

  • Stay focused
  • Say “no” more often
  • Don’t take on too many tasks
  • To create a working environment in which he is more undisturbed

Then he starts his work.

Achieving your own goals

These two examples show how powerful WOOP is and how it can become a healthy habit. Only looking optimistically into a beautiful future carries the risk of remaining stuck in your dreams. Mental contrasting and WOOP give your dreams the necessary portion of reality to make them come true.

How will you use WOOP in your life?

The contributors:

How To Be A Better Leader In Less Than 10 Minutes per Day!

by Graham Dodds

“I’m so busy right now!” 

You bump into an old colleague in the queue at Starbucks, or have a chance encounter with a business acquaintance in the street. The conversation might go something like this… 

“Hey, great to see you! How are you doing?”

“Great thanks, how are you? How are things?”

“Busy, doing well, but really busy”

Busy…busy…busy…

“I’m busy” has become the default response when we attempt to summarise how our lives are going. There are many reasons why we do this which are probably broad and interesting enough to fill another article, but perhaps the simplest explanation is that it is exactly how we all feel. We are all so busy!

You see, with the majority of knowledge based work, there is no clear end. There is always more to do, and we are usually juggling multiple initiatives at once.

With our calendars so full and our days packed with so many competing priorities, we can’t possibly do everything, right? Something has to give, but what? Well, what we often find is that what tends to get neglected are those things that don’t come most naturally to us. These are commonly things that we know we should do, but because they are not our default behaviours, or we don’t really like them, they get put off for another day, or week, or month, or forever…

“I can’t possibly do everything, but I feel like I should”

For example, at our company, Quiet Leaders Academy, many of our clients are professionals who typically reside closer to the introverted end of the personality spectrum. We often hear from them, or their teams, that they could do more to connect with their colleagues on a regular basis, or they tell us that they should probably manage their network better, or do more to get their voice heard in meetings.

These are things that don’t always come naturally. They want to do them, and know they should do them, but when time is tight other things that are more familiar and comfortable are placed at the front of the queue instead.

In this example, neglecting these important activities can leave the leader’s colleagues and connections feeling neglected, perhaps leaving a sense that he/she is disconnected, or worse yet, aloof. Bosses may expect more visibility of progress and issues, and acquaintances expect better than only being contacted when something is needed from them. There are, of course, many more examples of why connecting with people is key to a successful and happy career and indeed life. Indeed, we devoted an entire workbook to this topic in our members sections at Quiet Leaders Academy.

On a day to day basis, these behavioural patterns may seem to be trivial, however, the cumulative effect of not taking simple, regular steps to stay connected can seriously hinder work performance and career growth. It can also eat away slowly at the self esteem of a leader who knows they are not properly fulfilling an essential part of their role. They know it, but will get to it tomorrow, or the next day, or maybe next week…

Designing Tiny Habits to drive Leadership Success

The great news is that there is a simple solution that can be implemented immediately to start making positive changes relatively seamlessly!

The answer is in designing tiny changes and weaving them into our existing lives. 

Let’s take our client Sally as an example. Sally came to us feeling like a fraud. She felt she was failing as a leader as she wasn’t charismatic enough, didn’t enjoy or make time for what she saw as ‘small talk’ with her team members, colleagues and bosses, and pretty much ignored her network. It had got to the point that she felt so bad about it that she was even becoming scared of fixing the issue. She felt that it would be too noticeable if she suddenly started ramping up her ‘chattiness’; that somehow it would look fake or inauthentic. Despite being aware of the situation and its impact and feeling really bad about it, in Sally’s words she was too busy to possibly make time for all of this time wasting chit-chat. She had too much work to do.

We worked with Sally using the Tiny Habits Method to look for small things that she could do in a few minutes, or even seconds every day to introduce some new behaviours that would address the issues she faced. You see, often what we think is a time problem is actually a behaviour problem. That’s not to say that Sally or anyone else is flawed; this way of behaving is a design flaw in all humans. With Tiny Habits, we can hack that design to our advantage.

The first step was to help Sally clarify her aspirations under the umbrella subject of connecting with people. She landed on 3 areas that she wanted to improve upon:

  1. To be more connected to her team members
  2. To grow her professional network
  3. To maintain better connections with her existing professional network

Whilst she was clear on these aspirations, they seemed too big and insurmountable. So we broke them down together to work out what she could do on a daily basis to connect with her team members, what small steps she could take to grow her professional network, and what simple things she could do to maintain stronger connections with existing business friends and acquaintances.

After throwing some ideas around and reducing them to very small behaviours, Sally landed on five things that she was confident that she could do every day.

  1. Always smile and say hello when passing her team members
  2. Email one team member, providing feedback, praise or just checking in
  3. Stop by one team members desk to say hello
  4. Send one new connection request on LinkedIn
  5. Send one message or comment to an existing LinkedIn connection 

Next we spent a little time to design these new behaviours seamlessly into Sally’s existing routines. For each of the new behaviours, we looked for an existing habit that was already programmed into Sally’s day so that we could use it as a trigger to do the new behaviour. 

With these prompts added in, Sally now had easy to follow habit recipes, as follows:

  1. After I enter the office door, I will smile and say hello to everyone I pass
  2. After I sip my morning coffee, I will email one team member, providing feedback, praise or just checking in
  3. After I hang-up on my morning zoom team meeting, I will stop by one team members desk to say hello
  4. After I sip my morning coffee, I will send one new connection request on LinkedIn
  5. After I return from lunch and sit down at my desk, I will send one message or comment to an existing LinkedIn connection 

The last important ingredient in the Tiny Habits recipe is to celebrate.This helps to wire in the habit by hacking our brains happiness chemicals, leading us to want to repeat the behaviour. For each habit Sally decided on an appropriate celebration to include, such as giving herself a thumbs-up, smiling to herself and physically patting herself on the back.

Small behaviours can have a huge impact over time

Sally was amazed by how simple this looked. It would take only a few minutes every day to do these behaviours and the compounding effect of doing these behaviours daily seemed highly appealing. She felt that she had designed habits that she could still do even on her busiest, most challenging days. 

As an introvert, the use of electronic communication methods, such as email or LinkedIn also helped Sally in the early stages as she built her new relationship-building muscles. Additionally, the incremental approach took away Sally’s fears of the change seeming too forced or unnatural.

In order to avoid being overwhelmed, Sally gradually implemented the new habits, starting with the first three, then adding the fourth after two weeks and the fifth another fortnight later. This worked well. Having three was better than one at first as this gave Sally a chance to monitor and compare what was working and what wasn’t between the different habit recipes.

After some experimentation, Sally swapped around some of the prompts and added new celebrations and six months later she reports that she does the behaviours on at least 95% of her work days. The rapid increase in LinkedIn followers has led to many interesting conversations, collaboration opportunities, and the introduction of a new service supplier to her company (which was very well received by her boss!) She was also delighted to see that the new habits have multiplied into other good behaviours, such as completely revamping her LinkedIn profile and posting regularly on her own and others’ threads. She has even had two potential job offers, but has decided to stay put as she is feeling re-energised in her existing role. 

As a Leader, small changes can create a powerful ripple effect

When we checked in with her team members a few months later they described a big change in their connectedness with Sally. They felt that she was much warmer, more approachable and seemed more part of the team. Several commented that they now felt that they could see the real Sally and as a result they were more motivated to drive results together and to give her feedback on what was and wasn’t working well. 

Sally had always aspired to be one of those leaders that she had read about; someone who was loved and respected by their teammates as they always made time for them, always had a smile and said hello in the corridor, or knew the names of her direct reports kids. She just didn’t know how to do all of this in the midst of a demanding job and a busy life. 

Now with just a bit of design work and some habits that take a few minutes per day she is well on her way to becoming the leader she aspires to be, and both she and her colleagues are loving it!

Graham Dodds

Founder of Quiet Leaders Academy

Certified Tiny Habits Coach,

lead@quietleadersacademy.com

Feeling Forgetful or Distracted? 3 Strategies to Boost Your Memory and Increase Your Focus

Did you ever see a film back in 1995 called Johnny Mnemonic? Keanu Reeves playing the part of Johnny who was able to store huge amounts of information in his memory using a computer chip.

In reality our memories are nothing like computers, however back in the early 90’s the idea of having a super powered memory was something that instantly grabbed my attention for a number of reasons:

  1. For years I had a reputation for having an extremely bad memory
  2. I made a decision to work hard on not only improving my memory but taking it to a whole new level, so in that same year (1995), I competed in the World Memory Championships and was ranked as one of the first ever Grand Masters of Memory in the World (crazy title, I know!)
  3. Also, in 1995 I created a Game show called Monkhouse’s Memory Masters for the BBC that aired to 8 million people.

Off the back of the TV show I fell into working with real people with real challenges and got hooked.

So, what does it take to go from having no confidence in your memory to knowing you can learn and remember anything you put your mind to?

It’s an over simplification, however if I had to, I’d break it down into 3 steps

  1. Memory Mindset
  2. Tiny Habits®
  3. Creative Memorization

Get the Right Memory Mindset

If someone asked you, “Would you like to improve your memory by 500%?” what would you say?  My guess is, for most people, they would jump at the chance. I’ve personally heard people respond with a phrase like, “Yeh, I could really do with that!” However, the real impact of having a good memory is rarely thought about.

So what if we were to be more specific? What if someone said you could learn a new way of thinking that would deliver:

  • Confidence in your ability to remember anything
  • Focus to overcome mind wandering and procrastination
  • Skills to save time, filter and remember what was important
  • Talents to help you step up in your career
  • Beliefs to start your own business
  • Potential to grow your current business
  • Freedom to do what you love and become an expert in your field 

If someone said that you could achieve all of this, how would you respond? What different choices would you make going forward? What impact would it have in your life? What would be the best part of having a set of strategies that allowed you to do each one of these things?

I’ve been lucky enough to work with people from all walks of life at different stages, from students to professionals or CEOs and even actors. The first coaching session is always the most interesting as people are buzzed up to start learning memory techniques and tips, however that is never where I start and here’s why… most people don’t know why they want to improve their memory AND they have beliefs that don’t support them. So we always start with the mindset and get absolute clarity on:

  • How a better memory will change their life
  • Uncovering hidden challenges and beliefs that could slow them down, hold them back or stop them in their tracks
  • 5 to 10 options they are absolutely committed to trying in the next 7 days

There is a catch to all of this though; there are no quick fixes, magic pills or microchips (at least not yet) that instantly transform your ability to remember. It takes energy and commitment; this is where Tiny Habits® come in…

Tiny Habits® for Memory

When I first heard about Tiny Habits I got pretty psyched. My initial driver to try them out was to create some better health habits. Since starting Tiny Habits I’ve gone from an erratic (every now and then) 20 minute morning workout to a 2 hour ritual that gets my mind and body in peak state for the day.

During my first conversation with BJ Fogg, he suggested I could use this method with my clients, so I decided to give it a go and trained as a coach. Shortly after I began introducing Tiny Habits for Memory and Focus to my clients and they loved them. They found it a simple way to introduce new techniques into their lives and it also helped create momentum when they hit a learning curve.

It was as if by creating these Tiny Habits they were not only planting the seeds for each of the strategies I shared, these seeds were taking root so it was easier for them to grow the larger behaviors they could actually use in real life situations.

Here is a simple example of a Tiny Habits for Memory

After I wake up in the morning
I will memorize 3 items
Then you celebrate to help the habit take root

Here’s the key though, you don’t just memorize by picking 3 items and repeating them over and over again in your mind, you get creative! For example let’s imagine your 3 items are a chair, plant and mobile phone.

You might imagine:

You give a chair to a plant that needs to make an urgent phone call.

This is called a Chain Story and you can create something like this in about 10 seconds. The interesting thing is, it’s very hard to forget.

Let’s ramp it up, look at these 9 items and try to remember them:

I created this using Rory’s Story Cubes

Now Imagine this: you are playing with the abacus and a key falls out, you use it to get inside the plane, which is caught by a giant hand that gives you the padlock. You shrink and jump inside and fall all the way through to a tree, you fall asleep and are woken up by lightning. You see the masks!

By doing the Tiny Habit above (with just 3 items) you start conditioning your brain to use this strategy more automatically.

Once you master this technique, its application goes way further than just simple items; you can use it to remember key points in a presentation, facts from a meeting, details about people, conversations and combined with a few other strategies even whole books!

Tiny Habits® for Focus

An essential ingredient to having greater memory retention and recall is the skill to instantly be in the moment. As someone who was a professional actor for many years this was intrinsic in being able to learn large scripts, let go of anxiety and remain confident. A large part of what I share with people is this skill of really getting into that state of flow. Here’s a very simple Tiny Habit to set you on the right path. I call these primer questions:

Example of Tiny Habits for Focus

After I finish my breakfast
I will ask myself, “what is the one thing I will give my focus to today?”
Celebrate

The purpose of this primer question is to turn on your internal radar to pay attention to the thing that is most important for you ‘today’. It is all too easy to be distracted by technologies and other peoples agenda, so by explicitly asking yourself a question along these lines every morning can bring real focus to your day.

By creating Tiny Habits for each of the Memory and Focus strategies you can incorporate them into your life so much easier.

So we’ve talked about facilitating the right mindset and creating Tiny Habits that will build real momentum. There is a primary ingredient that we still need to achieve some of the outcomes we went through at the beginning of this post. You have already had a taster of this when memorizing those 9 items earlier; I call this Creative Memorization.

Creative Memorization

The idea behind Creative Memorization isn’t just about remembering. It is about experiencing a deep level of learning. To truly learn, you have to create; with creation and use comes understanding. You move from a place of knowing something intellectually to having something in your body – this is what creative memorization feels like.

Creative memorization is not a passive form of remembering but a way of thinking that is results-focused and draws on each of your memory types (episodic, semantic, procedural, emotional, priming, conditioned response), looking for creative ways to make anything more memorable so you can put it into practice.

Before you jump into the complex stuff, with any new skill you need to master the basics. Try this well known strategy called the Chain Method. Here’s an example I usually start with to get people going. There are 15 main items in this story. Read the story 2-3 times and each time imagine it more vividly in your mind than the time before…

Big Ben is wearing a fur coat and bouncing up and down on a springboard. He dives into a large pot of honey, and out of the honey comes a dinosaur wearing a red baseball cap and swinging a baseball bat. It starts smashing up a Ferrari with the baseball bat. Driving the Ferrari is Tom Cruise, who is smoking a huge cigar. Tom looks over to his right and stubs out the cigar on the head of a bald man. The bald man is eating a big sticky Mars bar, and wrapped around the Mars bar is a slimy snake, playing the drums and drinking a bottle of Budweiser.

Drop a comment below letting me know how well you got on!

Where to start?

Over the last 5 years I’ve written a number of books to help people build their skills in this area. For some people a book is enough and for others they are looking for something more, that could be some personal 1-1 coaching or online video training they can complete at their own pace to step up in their career, make the leap to start a business or just feel like they have the freedom to do the thing they love.

There’s a whole bunch of resources and courses you can find here. If you really want to take things to the next level then check out: Tiny Habits for Focus and Productivity

Feel free to ping your questions to me!

While Johnny Mnemonic is still science fiction, the potential of having an outstanding memory is absolutely a reality. All it takes is the right mindset, tiny habits, and some killer strategies.

Ready to celebrate your success? Get our killer list of 102 Ways to Celebrate here!

The Contributor: Mark Channon

www.markchannon.com

5 Habits to Remembering Names

Having worked with clients for over 20 years in the art of improving memory I noticed that there were a number of common problems people shared:

  • getting over the learning curve when it came to using memory strategies
  • finding a way to implement them in real life situations
  • making this new way of ‘thinking and learning’ a habit

So when I first discovered the Tiny Habits® Method it sparked my interest. I had a feeling it could perhaps be a solution to overcoming some of these key problems.

Tiny Habits for Remembering Names…

One of the simplest ways to demonstrate how Tiny Habits can help improve your memory is to pick a specific problem countless people deal with, in this case, Remembering Names.

The steps to remembering a persons name, for the most part are quite straight forward, in summary you need to do 5 different things:

  • Prime your brain to pay attention
  • Become present and listen
  • Make a connection (this is where your creativity comes into play)
  • Use the name in the conversation (can be harder than it sounds)
  • Have a good strategy to revise for long-term retention

Each one of these steps use part of what I refer to as creative memorisation and initially this can feel like a lot of things to do, although in real-life steps 1-4 all happen in about 3-10 seconds depending on the name.

Imagine being able to walk into a room with 20 people and walk out remembering everyones name. Depending on what line of business you are in, this can be a very valuable strategy, especially if you can meet someone a month later and still remember their name.

The Challenge…

The biggest challenge I’ve observed is making all of this automatic and not getting caught up in old habits. This is where the Tiny Habits Method excels and makes it all feel super easy.

One of the things I love about Tiny Habits is that the ‘recipes’ for new habits are so simple to create, here’s an example of how to take the first 2 steps of remembering names and turn them into a simple tiny habit.

Tiny Habit 1: Prime & Presence

After I sit down on my train into work (you replace this with your own anchor, a habit which already exists in your life)
I will choose a person and ask myself, “what is interesting about them?” while I breathe, look and listen
Woohoo! (celebration)

If you did nothing else and just this for the next 7 days you would notice your ability for remembering names start to improve. Once this habit becomes automatic it starts to permeate into other parts of your life. You walk into a meeting and your brain is already primed to notice the people in the room and be ready to listen to their names rather than your mind being diverted or wondering about other things.

Try it out…

If you have any challenges with remembering names and you’re looking for a strategy that not only gives you a way to remember names on the fly, makes them stick and makes it all happen on autopilot then I’ve created a free 7 day email course to get you up and running over at memoryschool.com

Here’s how it works:

  • You get an email every day for 5 days which includes a breakdown of each of the memory strategies for remembering names, a supporting video and some follow up activities
  • You’ll drop a quick email back to me with any challenges
  • I’ll offer you some tips to improve
  • Within 5 days you will have all the memory strategies in place to make remembering names a breeze 🙂
  • On Day 6 you will learn about the 3 Tiny Habits® Method for Remembering Names
  • On Day 7 You’ll check in with me on your first experience with Tiny Habits for Names

For the next week, you can check in with me everyday on how your habits are going and I will give you some personal 1-1 email coaching.

It’s as simple as that!

You can get started at anytime, just pop over to memoryschool.com and sign up for the 7 Day free email course.

If you want to improve your memory Tiny Habits is the simplest and most effective way to create those key behaviors. Imagine if you could use this strategy to not just remember names but remember anything?