We all know the famous Nike tagline, “Just Do It.” The idea is that there’s an athlete in all of us, and all we need to do is just go out there and do it. Sound simple?

Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. I’ll align this article with project management, but first, let’s consider exercising. The purpose for most people is to lose weight, tone up, or become more healthy and live longer. To do this takes a lot of time and commitment. You have to exercise at least a few times per week. But, how many of us have failed to keep it going even after we said: “I’m going to just do it”? So, what’s missing?

The missing link — Habits

I recently listened to Psychologist Wendy Wood on the Hidden Brain episode called Creatures of Habits.

I’ll paraphrase what she said about habits — Habits are cognitive associations. When you repeat an action over and over, what you are doing is learning a new behavior in a particular context. So, the next time you're in that context, the behavior comes to mind. If you are more variable with the action, it will take longer to form that habit. It takes longer to develop the habit for complex behaviors with many different parts.

A study experiment had people add a simple behavior to their day to study how long it takes for the habit to solidify. For example, adding a glass of water to your everyday schedule took two months for it to become automated, so you don't need to make decisions about it. But, going to the gym could take 3-4 months going every day before it becomes habitual, so you don't have to think.

Many of us have failed to turn running, gym workouts, yoga, or daily walking into our lifestyle. According to Wendy, that’s because we have been unable to turn them yet into daily habits that are automatic requiring no thinking.

What Habits Have you Developed?

In the blog comment field below, let us know what habits you built up for the better. To get you thinking, here’s my experience. Before my project management profession, I consulted health clubs with on-site consulting services where I would be engaged weeks at a time. A perk was free gym access. I was on the road with nothing to do other than hanging out at book stores, restaurants, and the gym — every day. After a couple of years in this profession, gym exercise became a habit as deeply engrained as brushing my teeth. In another example, I started learning the cello a few years ago and still practice every day. I had weekly lessons, and my teacher ensured I practiced daily. Today, my cello practice is baked as a habit even if I don’t have lessons for weeks.

Can you list things you do in your life where you have solidified good habits?

Project Management and Habits

What would you like to gain as automated habits for managing your projects, or what would you like your team members to build as habits? Do you have examples of habits built over time that has improved project planning, execution, and governance?

Annmarie Curley, project management consultant and the owner of Newgrange IT Consulting, shared an example of project management complex behaviors that become automated daily actions.

Annmarie says,

“Everyone has a period that is this most productive time of day — for me; it’s the morning. I try to hold this time for my #1 priority and knock that out before getting sucked into the rest of the day. When I'm leading teams and projects, I have weekly/bi-weekly habits that are non-negotiable. These include a regular cadence of check-in times with the team or leaders on the team, stakeholders, and executive sponsors. I also block time to review the project risks, issues, actions, and plans. I find that if I add these specific focus periods to my calendar, it doesn't slip off my radar.”

Her other habits are available in her YouTube video called Friday Focus and Planning Webinar. Here’s a sampling:

• Block 15 minutes in your daily calendar for daily planning

• Block 15 minutes on Friday afternoon for next week’s planning

• Block out refocus time throughout the day

Lawrence Dillon, CEO of ENKI, LLC, also shared examples of habit building. ENKI is a consulting firm specializing in strategic transformation. His consulting team has a dual focus on servicing existing clients as well as building new client relationships. For the latter, they spend one hour each day reaching out to their network or contacting new people.

Lawrence says,

“The purpose is not to sell anything, but rather to ask how they can personally help their contact. It’s about building a relationship with trust and value. For certain employees, this is an ongoing responsibility. Most of them have found that with repetition, it became an automated habit where they don’t need to set reminders. They just do it over and over.”

Some of my own Pie customers have shared that one of their most complex challenges was to get team members to go into the project tool to update their task progress or post their work-effort time in the tool’s timesheet fields. As we all know, executive reports are useless unless the team updates the content in near real-time. One customer shared that they encouraged their team members to post daily, but it was imperative to post on Friday for the week. At least Monday morning data would show the latest updates for executives. They did this every Friday for months, and over time the team members would no longer forget to post.

Project management is much more complex than brushing your teeth or drinking water, and even those simple activities can take a couple of months to become automatic. Think about how much time it might take for project tool progress updates and timesheet reporting for them to become true auto-pilot habits. When you tell your team to do something like marking updates, don’t blame them if they forget the next day. Their work life is complex and habits take time to form.

At Pie, our philosophy is to make our project tool as simple and painless as possible so users will have less friction to build good habits of using the tool. It’s not perfect, but if we can continue to improve our user experience, my goal would be to reduce the time it takes for our customer users to bake in good habits that don’t require any thinking.

“Just Do It, Over and Over”

Maybe Nike’s tagline should be changed to something that says just doing it is not enough. We need to do it so many times in a row for it to become a habit that doesn’t require any thinking. “Just do it” is a great start, but what comes next?

Do you have any project management activities that have become automatic habits to help improve project results that you would like to share with us?

Written by: Paul Dandurand, Pie CEO & Founder

Photo by: Gary Butterfield