How do you develop a habit?

There we go – 3rd blog post and that’s where it’s stops. For the 3rd time. Coincidently, we’re now in mid January and some time soon people will start breaking their New Year resolutions. This one started before NY, so no excuses! I have promised myself to keep writing and there’s nothing worse than failing your own expectations. At least for me.

Btw. this is the soundtrack to this blog post is: Linkin Park, Breaking the Habit. The song is about breaking bad habits, not developing good ones, but still it’s stuck in my head right now.

While trying to self-analyse myself as to why I stopped something I wanted to do so much , I pondered on how much does it take for people to form their habits. According to research from UCL it takes on average 66 days. Which would take me till the end of March… Long time, yes. Challenging, not really – if you’re taking small steps. I noticed that people focus too much on the end goal, e.g.  want to lose 10kg, want to set up a business; rather than thinking about what would be the process of getting there, what would bring them one step closer.

So this year, instead of grand plans of who and what I want to become I focus on the small, realistic and actionable steps. That includes 10 mins a day clearing clutter to make the space around me more organised; getting up at 6am, so I can work for 2 hours on my own projects before work; going for a run 3 times a week, so I can feel healthier and stronger. So far it works – but let’s see if I last till end of March. I should schedule in my diary blog writing too. If you have any proven methods of developing habits – share them in the comments!

 

Entrepreneurs underestimating the value of education?

I am always shocked how many entrepreneurs underestimate the value of education. Many genuinely have talent and such a good idea that they just have to abandon studying and pursue it – and that’s fine. But there are others that clearly despise those in higher education and I truly do not understand why. I often hear it is a waste of time. Really?

My own case couldn’t be different. Quite frankly, during my 2 years of MSc in Business Innovation I have learnt so much that I can compare it to 5 years of learning on the job. During the final year I had to mostly focus on my own research and I read so many books and papers that I feel like I have leapfrogged a major part of my own self-development. I just find it mind-blowing that for most questions you have, someone out there has done their research into it and has got answers ready for you. You just need to find them.

Some will argue with me that modern degrees are outdated and there’s nothing you can learn that can be applied to today’s entrepreneurial world. That’s also wrong. Academic research helped me actually understand better how the whole innovation ecosystem works. One day for instance, I have learnt about Absorptive Capacity. In simple words: it has been proven that the more you know and experienced, the easier it gets to do new things. Seems obvious, right? But that also explains why so many copy-cat startups fail or will never become as good as the original. The original team has got a superior absorptive capacity – the sum of their experiences, their knowledge, approach to business, all of which combined is very unique and almost impossible to recreate. The copycat business has only got an idea, without the same DNA of the team, it will never create the same business.

Alright, that’s it for today’s banter. I look forward to you thoughts on this topic!

Creativity or rather lack of it

You should have noticed by now that I am not a very ‘creative’ person – I don’t have any fancy themes, no pictures so far, and I am also not very creative with coming up with blog names. Deal with it. It doesn’t matter… For year I even fought against this label ‘creative’ to be put on me. How can I be creative if I’m so logical, practical and left-brained? Well – I actually can. I can be very creative with problem solving, coming up with new ideas, even though I am not very artistic.

Everyone in fact has got some kind of creativity inside them but it may be just having a long winter sleep. There are ways to awaken it. Usually those ways will make you feel uncomfortable, but that’s what it takes to make you go out of your way and try something different, a new way of doing things, different approach. Sometimes if you’re facing a ‘creative block’ and can’t find a solution to a problem or a new idea – put yourself in someone else’s shoes. How would this girl do it / how would he go about it?

Another way that helps me is to awaken your senses. Smell the flowers, taste your food (you can force yourself by getting blind-folded), listen to classical music – whichever way you choose just focus on the sense that is leading for that activity. Somehow, even though I am not artistic myself, I appreciate work of art and it opens up new ways of perceiving things around me and as a result – affects my own creativity. There are many more ways, but I’ll stop here for now – maybe you can share your tricks in comments?

The beginnings & Who owns your online life?

This must be my fourth or fifth attempt to start blogging… Last time I was actually going quite strong, committed to writing regularly, until I realised (too late) that the platform I was using has shut down and suddenly I was not able to download any of my writing. All gone. 

Anyways, the reason why I started writing last time (about a year ago), was that I realised writing is my weakest point and it was very difficult to me to write even a single line that would sound just a tiny bit interesting. So exactly for that reason I thought to myself that I really need to practice writing regularly, because practice is what makes us better, right? Even if we really, really hate it – trust me it does get better once you pass a certain threshold. I recently started classes in ballroom dancing and my teacher calls it an ‘awkward stage’. It applies anywhere. Back to the story – this was my motivation a year ago but Posterous’ closure has stopped me from writing (I know, poor excuse).

And now I’m back to the blogo-sphere and 2 paragraph down the line it doesn’t seem as hard as it used to! Why? Maybe because in between I have written thousands and thousands of words – for academic research papers, not blogs though. It just proves the point that whatever it is you hate and you’re really bad at at – just practice the opposite – getting BETTER and you will become better. 

One last though – closure of my previous blog and losing all of the articles I have written there made me very nervous about a lack of ownership of the data we post online. Previously, it didn’t even cross my mind, but imagine this : What if the only place where you stored your pictures was Facebook and it suddenly closed down? What if have never kept any business cards and managed your professional life entirely on LinkedIn and it closed down? What if all your music was on Spotify and it closed down? What if all your files were on Dropbox and then it shut down taking it all down… ? These are just few scary thoughts to plant into your mind and reconsider what you think about the data ownerships online. Whatever you post is out there and most likely you don’t even have a right to it. What do you do then? You retrieve back to the cave, back to the non-digital life… or just keep doing what you’re doing hoping that the technology you use won’t disappear. I hope for that too, because I do heavily rely on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn/Spotify/Dropbox and many many others!