Recently I’ve seen lots of blog posts and magazine articles about habits and how they can improve your productivity. But when reading past the headlines, I realize that often what they are describing are routines, not habits.  In my last blog post, I encouraged people to create new routines in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. I deliberately wrote about routines instead of habits because, despite being very similar, they are not the same thing. Since that post was published, several readers have asked me about the difference between a routine and a habit.

Habits and routines are both regular, repeated actions, but habits are a specific type of routine. Habits involve an automatic response, with little conscious thought, to a specific cue. Routines, on the other hand, require a more conscious effort. The difference is choice and intent.  

Habits are a type of routine, but not all routines become habits.

Nir Eyal

How does knowing the difference impact your productivity?

There is no question that habits and routines can help improve productivity. Knowing the difference between the two helps you understand which repeated behaviors that are more suited to become habits, which are more suited to become routines, and which one is the best choice to help you accomplish your goals. 

Routines are necessary building blocks to habits. To create productive habits, you must first be able to create productive routines. Skipping this step only sets you up for failure. Once you define the routine, you still have to intentionally choose to do it. Do it consistently enough over a long enough time period, then maybe, maybe, it becomes a habit.

It’s important to understand you can’t make everything a habit. The appeal of habits is to make certain tasks automatic where you don’t spend time or energy thinking about it. Tasks require deep thought, deliberation, or evaluation aren’t good candidates to become habits.

Knowing the difference between habits and routines also helps highlight the importance of intention in productivity. One of the things I work on with my clients is being intentional in their actions, to consciously think about their goals and whether their current actions are moving them closer to that goal.

Intentionality is a necessary component of productivity. You need to stop and take a look around occasionally and evaluate whether your actions are still helping you achieve your goals. Habits, by driving you to do tasks unconsciously and automatically, can keep you from doing that.

The goal of this post is not to get people to stop using the words habit and routines interchangeably (although that would be nice!). The goal is to help you understand the difference between the two and how to use that difference to your advantage.

The spread of the novel coronavirus that causes COVID19 has disrupted businesses and industries worldwide. The disruptions highlight the importance of having backup plans in your small business.

Now I’m not talking about digital backup plans, which you should already have in place. I’m talking about emergency or disaster backup plans. A typical plan assumes normal situations while a backup plan is specifically for unique situations that can cause major disruptions in your business procedure.

It’s important to have a plan for emergencies so you and your business can stay productive. When emergencies hit, the keys to making a backup plan work with minimal loss or damage are preparation and communication.

Preparation

Years ago, I worked part-time in a retail store while I was studying for the bar exam. One day when I was working, the power went out in the store. Once it was apparent that the power was going to be out for most of the day, several of my coworkers started speculating that the managers would have let at least some of us go home early. With the power out, the registers weren’t working and we couldn’t ring up customers’ purchases or swipe their credit cards for payment.

Not so fast. We were shocked to find out that the store managers had a backup plan. With an efficiency that still blows my mind today, the store managers pulled out everything we would need to ring up purchases and process credit cards manually. Each cashier was given a solar calculator, sales slips, and a credit card imprinter. For those of you who don’t know what a credit card imprinter is, it is a non-electric, manually-operated piece of equipment that uses 2- or 3-part sales slips to make an imprint of the raised numbers and letters on the face of a credit card.

We had everything we needed to continue to ring up purchases. At some point in the past, someone, or several someones, figured out what tools would be needed to ring up customers manually and gathered those tools together in preparation for the day when we might need them to keep the business open.

Lesson: Ask yourself what tools you would need to run your business in an emergency. Get the tools together and put them somewhere accessible, but out of the way of your day-to-day activities.

Communication

Perhaps even more important than the calculators and imprinters was the communication from the managers. Not only did they take the time to show us how to calculate sales tax and use the imprinter but they acknowledged the extraordinary circumstances and reassured us that it was okay if we made mistakes like math errors or listing the products incorrectly on the handwritten receipts. The priority was to keep ringing up customers. Having the correct price or item number was secondary. We were able to keep our store up and running while neighboring stores sent customers away.

Lesson: Communicate the instructions and priorities of your backup plan. Explain what is the priority and what is secondary.

So what’s your plan to keep your business up and running through the unexpected?