How one habit can change the course of your life
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Did you know that the National Endowment for the Arts did a study and found that 33% of high school graduates, never finish another book after graduating!
Can you believe that?!?!
Another stat that I’ve seen is that 65% of people making less than $30,000.00 a year haven’t read at least one book in the last year.
Compare those facts to the fact 2 of the richest people in America, Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have both been quoted saying that they read every day.
It seems obvious that if we would like to increase our likelihood of being successful, we should take after these extremely success men.
So how do we create the habit of continuing education and with all the other things that fill our day, when are we going to find the time?
Ironically the solution to our problem is in a book, in The Power of HABIT: Why we do what we do in life and business. By Charles Duhigg.
In the book Charles explains the habit loop as a 3 stage process. We will use stopping at a red light as a simple example.
- The CUE – The cue is what gets the whole process rolling, in this example it would be the red light hanging above an intersection, or possibly a yellow light, which you have been trained to understand leads to a red light.
- The ROUTINE – The routine is just that, it’s what happens after the cue has been processed. In our example the routine is, removing your foot from the gas pedal, moving it slightly to the left, and then pressing down with even pressure onto the brake pedal.
- THE REWARD – Finally is the reward. In our examples the reward is a smooth stop that prevents us from a painful collision.
Know that we know how habits work, how do we create the habit of learning?
Well, I will give you hint it involves that vehicle we were just talking about.
Utilize your time behind the wheel
On average Americans will spend an hour everyday driving. If you are a business owner that number can go up significantly.
To and from the office, meeting with clients, transporting children from school and daycare and running errands. There’s been days that I have spent 6 hours just driving!
With all this time spent in the vehicle, most people start up their car, turn on the radio and head down the road.
Often turning on the radio is just another habit and our minds immediately go to thinking about something else.
It’s literally just background noise.
So here’s what I did, and what you can do too.
Take the mobile device that you carry with you everywhere, and fill it with educational audio programs.
What I use is Audible. Years ago I signed up for an Audible membership and every month I go in and get a new book.
Now when I get into my vehicle, I open up the app, click on my recent book and drive.
I have set a rule for myself – I only listen to the radio if I have other passengers in the vehicle.
If I have guest in my vehicle, I don’t want to force them to listen to an audio book on accounting, but when I am alone which for most of us, is most of the time, I am continually learning.
If you drive an hour a day that’s 7 hrs a week. That’s almost an entire day of training every week!
So if you are looking to improve you life and business, try changing your habit of listening to the same songs that you’ve heard a hundred times, and spend your driving time learning.
Like I said, I love Audible, I can’t even put a number on how much better my business and personal life is, due to listening to audio books.
If you want to improve your life by learning something new every day, I would highly recommend clicking on the link below and getting Audible for yourself.