A Habit Is A Recurring Task

A task is something to be done. Take out the trash. Run payroll. Buy a birthday gift. File your taxes.

Each of those tasks can be broken down into some basic steps; the procedure, process or checklist. A business' ability to grow and scale is directly related to its Operations. Its Habits. People do the actual work and as you add more team members, you add more complexity. Those operational assets need to be air-tight to scale and grow.

A Habit is simply a task that gets done over and over and over ad nauseum.

The magic to productivity, and this is probably the biggest takeaway from today's email (seriously), is knowing the periodicity of a Habit. The frequency that such a Habit occurs. The recurrence. The cycle length.

A Habit can fall into one of six possible groups based on its periodicity:

• Daily
• Weekly
• Monthly
• Quarterly
• Annually
• Ad Hoc
  

Each of those "tasks" mentioned at the start of this section are actually a Habit. Look again.

Taking out the trash is a weekly (maybe bi-weekly) Habit. Payroll is often a bi-monthly Habit. Birthdays happen once a year. So for each friend you buy a gift for, that is an annual Habit. And filing taxes is usually an annual Habit too.

The biggest key to my "excellence" is an intentionally designed stack of Habits. And for the first time ever (besides conversations with friends) I want to share what I've evolved to doing.

And this will continue to evolve. As should your systems as life goes on and new circumstances appear.

Daily Habits

Anything you do day-in and day-out needs to be well thought out and intentionally designed. Especially since a lot of other Habits can depend on daily performance.

I personally believe that one's morning rituals are critical for starting the day right and being effective.

This summer I re-designed my morning rituals to be location-agnostic. Meaning, every day can start with these same steps regardless of where I wake up.

Upon waking, I do the following in this order:

• Give thanks.
• Use the restroom.
• Get dressed/brush teeth.
• Recite my affirmations.
• Take my meds while declaring today's possibility.

As long as I have my meds with me, which I always do, every day can start the exact same. This daily ritual ensures my mornings are effective. Plus, at this point, it's basically "automated" from the standpoint of me doing it without much thought each morning.

 
Business-wise, I typically start every day by looking at two dashboards. First, I look in our Trello boards for items with a due date of today. We use Trello for our Operations. I also look at the Keap dashboard for leads and clients who have a next action date of today. This helps me navigate and plan my day better. I also look at the calendar because we have recurring tasks and reminders as governance for critical things like payroll and tax stuff.

One last daily Habit is using shortcut keys to be more productive. The faster you are at using your computer (and phone), the more you and your team can get done in a day. Oh yeah, make sure you learn to use a password manager too. This will save you boatloads of time in your day-to-day.

Weekly Habits

There are important things that need to happen each week.

Personally, I go food shopping and meal prep on Fridays. Sometimes I don't prep until the weekend but that is the goal. This way I can quickly and easily eat during the week and not waste money on fast food >_<

I also have a weekly Habit to sort out my meds and supplements for the week. Anything that needs a refill goes onto my shopping list for the weekly gathering.

Lastly, because I plan each month and quarter, I try to journal on Fridays to track my progress. Again, sometimes I miss a week or don't journal until the weekend, but this Habit allows me to reflect and re-align my efforts each week. This Habit also makes it easier to plan each month and quarter because I can see what happened each week.

Business-wise, there are some key activities. First, I make an effort to save 30% of every deposit that comes in. This covers payroll taxes and leaves room for profit. Profit first, right?

We also have a weekly team meeting. This is critical for alignment amongst the team. The business also has monthly and quarterly goals, so we use these meetings to track progress and discuss issues or roadblocks.

Lastly, for the business, I try to update the Scoreboard every Friday before shutting down. Again, this keeps my finger on the pulse of the critical numbers that drive the business.

Monthly Habits

This is where things start to get interesting. Assuming myself and the business have been honoring our chosen Habits throughout the month, we can now leverage those key activities.

Personally, I make a list of Goals for each month broken down by Financial, Impact, Relationships, Health and Stuff. These goals are designed to drive my quarterly objectives and annual priorities. I can use my weekly journal to see what worked, what didn't work, and what needs to shift for the coming month.

Business-wise, there are some powerful Habits. First, we have a monthly management meeting to review the month's goals and check on the quarterly initiatives. This is also where we will "Plan Our Work" and get new cards in Trello for the month. Which now means new things fall into the daily workflow.

We also generate cards for the new month for recurring projects and clients. For example, every social channel has a card in Trello. We have a card each month to track things with each channel and manage the community. For any retainer clients, we spin up a new card each month to track their services.

There are critical Money Habits that happen monthly too. To start, payroll is run on the 4th and 19th of each month. This is also the cadence at which we work receivables and send out invoices to collect. These processes are checklist-driven to ensure excellence every time.

Remember how we save 30% of every deposit each week? Well, assuming that happens, once a month I can quickly and easily remit the federal and state payroll taxes. It's all checklist driven and takes about 15 mins soup-to-nuts.

Lastly, I also run the financial reports each month. In under an hour, I generate a Balance Sheet, Cashflow Statement, and P&L. This allows me to see what happened with the money this past month and can inform my focus.

Quarterly Habits

Now things start to get even more interesting. The true power of intentionally designed Habits that stack and support each other starts to show through here.

 
Again assuming myself and the business have been honoring the monthly Habits, we can now easily handle our quarterly duties.

Personally, once a quarter I review the annual plan and how last quarter went. This is also a great time to review the weekly journal entries for the quarter (I make a new note for journaling each quarter). This allows me to see where I need to adjust and re-align the next quarter. I will also use this time to create the next month's goals while my focus is tight and fresh.

Now, for the business. We also do a quarterly/monthly management meeting for realignment and calibration.

Money-wise, remember the monthly tax payments? Each quarter, in the US anyway, you have to report the payroll taxes that were remitted the last quarter. And then, for Arizona, I also have to do our unemployment taxes.

Annual Habits

This is the icing on the gravy. Once a year there are similar activities to the quarterly Habits.

Personally, I review last year's quarterly goals and journal entries. I dig into the data where needed. I use that to build an annual plan that feeds my 5 and 20 year plans. Yes, this goes waaay up the chain as far as focus for my life's vision and dreams.

Business-wise, we do the same thing. A multi-day offsite with management to review the year and come up with a game plan for the upcoming one. Usually we get the annual priorities down, then reverse engineer those into quarter 1 priorities. From there we get a plan for January and it's off to the races!

Money has a couple of critical annual Habits. Primarily, filing the personal and business taxes. Thanks to my diligent monthly financial reporting, and quarterly Habits, compiling all the information for the CPA happens "automatically".

Every month I update an annual P&L spreadsheet with this month's P&L numbers. So by the time January rolls around, there is nothing to dig for. Send the annual P&L and that's all there is to it!

Ad Hoc Habits

Ad hoc is a fancy word for "on the fly" or as needed.

There are many Habits that occur when they occur. With no particular recency. But nonetheless they are recurring tasks.

Fixing a flat tire is an ad hoc thing. Creating a new customer journey Plan is an ad hoc thing. Standing up a new website for the company is ad hoc.

For these key activities, we also have a list of them with their associated checklists. No sense in leaving things to chance. Especially with stuff like standing up a new website.

And that my friend are the series of Habits that support my so-called "excellence".

There are many more Habits but these are some of the core ones.

What did you see for yourself in this share? Let me know!