Habits of Thinking

“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.”

- Samuel Johnson - author

When we think about habits we typically think about them in a physical form. Good habits like exercising three or four times a week. (We do right?) Bad habits that come to mind are eating or drinking too much or smoking. However if your aim is to become a great leader of your business or organization or family, how much time do you spend thinking about your habits of thought? Something worth thinking about.

As a leader there are subtle implications here with powerful consequences. When we allow our habits of thinking to have full control we end up going through life mostly on autopilot. As the opening quote says habits emerge over time. We don’t necessarily intend them or consciously think about what habits serve us best and which ones don’t. They just take over from our repetitious use of them in our thinking, feeling and doing.

When we let our habits of thinking go unchallenged our engagement with the world becomes less necessary. Day after day we just go along with what we “know” with the help of our habits. We avoid being dependent on what the world is actually doing by becoming dependent on our habits. We create a buffer zone between ourselves and that world. As a leader can you see the danger here? We pay less and less attention to what’s really going on because our habits are in charge.

Think about what this means to you and your company when a problem arises. How we define the problem is likely to be in a way we’ve habitually considered relevant to them. What we consider relevant then determines how we define it. We miss the fact that every problem has its own unique properties. We see it from our habits perspective not from what’s going on in the real world.

Have you ever wondered how former Fortune 500 companies such as Kodak or American Motors or Blockbuster or TWA with assets most of us can’t even imagine ended up in the dustbin of history? You don’t have to dig too deep to uncover habits of thinking that in hindsight now look ridiculous. There were lots of smart people running these companies. But in many cases they were unaware of the powerful hold their habits of thinking had on them.

When we rely solely on our habits of thinking, on our gut feel, on our experience, we’ve trapped ourselves in a position where we’re sure we “know” what’s going on and what’s relevant to the problem at hand. If we’re not aware of this we’re likely on the path to becoming a mini-version of the now extinct companies listed above.

So what to do?

Being aware that we have habits of thinking that are deeply ingrained is a great place to start. Being curious about a problem when it arises is another good step. Asking more questions to get a better feel for what’s really going on and less time spent trusting our gut feeling is another. When we start to challenge our habitual thinking and question what’s really going on we need to be ready for answers that may not line up with what we believe to be true. This is where we really see how strong our habits are. They’ll fight new data that doesn’t align with our habitual thinking to the death.

If we can begin to interrogate the problem with an open mind we learn things we would likely have otherwise missed. Being in a “learning mindset” rather than a “knowing mindset” is a key to making better decisions based on the uniqueness of each situation. We have a better chance to see the consequences of our decisions ahead of time and adjust our choices accordingly. When we get into a learning mindset we become more aligned with what’s really going on in the world ir-regardless of whether our old habitual thinking agrees with it or not. The end result. We quit being prisoners to our habitual thinking and end up consistently making better decisions.

A final thought worth considering is Aristotle’s take on habits: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” What habits of thinking are keeping your organization from excellence?