I'm recovering from my annual Prague trip for U. Pitt -- amazing city and great client, but flights are BRUTAL. Posting pics soon.

My blog has nearly FIVE YEARS worth of time-saving tips plus my new "Pings" -- check it out at http://ping.fm/jKXfn

Skype-to-Skype video calling is pretty darned cool -- great for catching up at home when away -- http://www.skype.com

Travel time saver: wear your suit on the plane on biz trip -- comes out less wrinkled than garment bag -- change immediately @ destination

Just released my March Timely Tips e-newsletter -- 3 Free Podcasts this month: http://ping.fm/ujCnB

I'm offering a free 100-pg. Timely Tips e-book and four e-mail podcasts -- http://ping.fm/CTg2I

Chapter 1 Continued: Why So Many Bad Habits?

Yes, that's right -- bad habits either create pleasure, or help avoid pain. And that is why they are so darned difficult to control and defeat without a dedicated, diligent focus.

Here's an example: I love fried foods. Chicken tenders, chicken wings, french fries, potato chips, onion rings, mozzarella cheese sticks, donuts, egg rolls, spring rolls. Bring them all! They are warm, and crunchy, and oh so tasty. I love to feel the "squish" and taste the flavor of the warm oil or butter in a freshly fried onion ring or french fry or egg roll. They are SOOO good! They provide amazing short term pleasure -- downright yummy!

But they have a definite downside, don't they? If you eat these foods much at all (once or more per day), and you are more than 19 years old, you are probably paying for the negative health aspects, aren't you? Extra weight, higher cholesterol, increased cardiovascular risk factors -- all due to those donuts that you love. Over a period of weeks, eating these foods frequently will cause you to add unwanted weight and fatty deposits to your body and your organs. Over months and years, they will likely shorten your lifespan and cause your quality of life to drop dramatically.

Pretty obvious stuff, eh? But yet, in the moment, that one little donut won't hurt will it? And you know what, it probably won't. A single donut won't hurt anyone. It might even be good for the soul. It is the aggregation of several years worth of donuts and other fried foods that causes the problems. And it is this aggregation -- this "bad" habit -- that so many of us end up struggling with.

Because a bad habit can simply appear and become entrenched with almost no effort on your part. You get into the habit of picking up a donut, or a sandwich with fries, every day as part of your morning or lunch routine. You aren't thinking about long-term impacts. You're just thinking, "Hey, it's quick, and it's yummy." And because it is quick, and it is yummy, you get a strong reinforcement from your brain that "Hey, this makes good sense. Let's keep doing this." You get ready to head for work, and the donut shop is on the way -- why not stop? Or, the little burger joint is right around the corner -- those fries are great -- and I can be back to work in 30 minutes. Let's go!

And next thing you know, that extra 5, 10, 15 pounds is squarely planted on your front, or your sides (or, God forbid, your backside!), and you don't know how it got there.

Bad habits are easy to create. Simply think about the now, forget about the future, and go for immediate and simple pleasure. And then, keep doing it. You'll probably find a bad habit there. And once created, they are a real pain to stop. Once you get the taste for fried food, it is hard to break the habit. You always want the french fries instead of the salad. You might even like the salad too, but your habit gets a force of its own, and at a subconscious level "talks" you into the fries.

And once your life has many bad habits, they can literally damage your life and your quality of life. An aggregation of bad habits is almost certainly going to cause your life to be significantly below its potential, and cause your happiness, fulfillment, and personal success to suffer. You will find yourself "in a rut". Sure, you might still be "functional". You might be "treading water". You might even be "slowly moving forward" (assuming you have at least a few very good habits counterbalancing the damage caused by the bad habits), but you can pretty much guarantee you are living a life something less than it could be due to these uncontrolled habits. So what do you do?

Chapter 1: Why So Many Bad Habits?

Until you learn to master your bad habits, you will be prisoner to them.

(Similar to a quote by Epicetus (Greek Philosopher – 55-135 A.D.): “Any person capable of angering you becomes your master; he can anger you only when you permit yourself to be disturbed by him.”

Here’s an interesting exercise for you. Stop right now, and write down a list of your personal habits. Divide the list between bad habits, and good habits. Put the book down, give yourself several minutes, and think about every aspect of your life – career, personal, financial, health, diet, spiritual, family, etc., and identify every habit you can think of. Put the book down now and DO IT!

*****

So what did you find out? Well, if you experienced what I experienced when I did this little exercise a couple of weeks ago, it probably was an eye opener! Now, I have always been considered an “overachiever”. I was a city champion in one sport, and the top playe in my high school in another. I was an honor student in high school, college, and graduate school. I’ve achieved important and prominent positions for some very well known and highly-regarded organizations, and I’ve received consistently high evaluations in every one of those jobs that I’ve held in my 15+ year career. I started my own firm with no debt and was consistently making a tangible profit within 18 months of starting. And I had written and published a book on my favorite topic, time management, within 2 years of starting that business. As is evidenced, I’m definitely not a slacker, and I’m a pretty self-motivated person.

And you know what I found out? My list of “bad” habits was about 3-4 times as long as my list of “good” habits! Do you want proof? Here’s my list:

Bad Habits (7/1/2006)

Too much fried foods
Video games
Staying up too late
Channel surfing
Mindless web surfing
High-fat foods
High-carb foods
Inconsistent aerobic exercise
Putting off important work
2 Much Lord of the Rings & Star Wars
Too much housecleaning/dishes
Ice cream
Pizza
Sleeping until my daughter gets up
Caffeinnated sodas after noon
Diet sodas
Too much aspartame in diet
Inconsistent writing/program development
Not making enough new business contacts
Missing available networking opportunities
Not working when a “little tired” in the evening
Not giving my wife enough attention/ affection
Spending too much time on the little stuff and not enough time on the big stuff
Impatient on the roads
Skipping breakfast
Eating until I’m “past full”
Spending our full weekly budget (not enough savings!)

My Current Good Habits (7/1/2006)

Brush teeth daily
Shower & shave daily
Dave Allen morning routine
Pick up house every day
Keeping property properly maintained
Clean sink every day
Stay on top of e-mail accounts
Quicken every week
Eating cereal most days
Writing
One-on-one time with my daughter daily
Doing something to keep my business moving forward every day

It was both fascinating and, honestly, somewhat depressing. Did you have the same experience?

My strong bet is that most of us had this experience. (If you didn’t, and your life is already dominated by good habits, you might not even need to be reading this! Just go back and keep living your already highly effective life!) For some reason, it is easy for even the most productive and self-motivated of us to get several “bad” habits. But why? Why do we get these bad habits (and their negative impacts) in our lives?

The reason is simple: “bad” habits at some very basic level either provide us with pleasure, or at least help us avoid pain. (more chapter 1 soon!)

AUTHOR UPDATE: (Originally written July 7, 2006)

I’m one week into my first triple habit flip, and I’m already seeing positive changes and results. I’ve already lost three pounds, and I haven’t really missed the fried foods at all. As a matter of fact, I’m really enjoying both the taste and quality of the fresher foods I am choosing as replacements. Last night, rather than vegging in front of the computer playing video games or surfing the web, I stared at the screen for a few minutes, thought about my desired habit flips, and then continued writing this book for a while. I then picked up some energy and went out roller blading and even took the dog for a walk. When I got back, my energy had recharged, and I even continued cleaning up my office space and prioritizing my tasks for tomorrow’s work day.

I’ve moved my bedtime forward by an hour or so, but I’m still having a little trouble going to bed at my desired 11:00 p.m. bedtime. My 10:45 routine of turning down the lights, brushing my teeth, and putting on some “sleepy” music seems to be helping though. I’m still hoping to get on an 11:00 p.m. bedtime with a 6:00 – 6:30 wake up time by the end of this three weeks. Then I should really be able to see my productivity and energy take off.

Introduction: My Personal Plight and Fight With “Bad” Habits

Today is July 6, 2006. Just a few days ago (July 1 to be exact), I had a pretty significant revelation: I’m in a little rut. And I’m not the type of person that likes or accepts “getting into a rut”. I took a look at my life and made a startling discovery – one that millions of people before have made – but one that few of us regularly KEEP making: I had a life full of bad habits.

I skipped breakfast. I ate too much. I ate too much of the wrong foods. I stayed up too late. I drank caffeine too late in the day (contributing to my staying up too late!) I got up too late (from staying up too late). I wasted time staying up too late on the Internet and playing video games, rather than creating value for myself and my family, or just going to sleep on time and getting good rest. I missed workouts. I was a “hot head” on the road. I was even occasionally emotionally unavailable for my wife – not a good list of regular habits! (Surprisingly, the one “bad habit” I didn’t have is the one that most Americans really struggle with – too much television! Two years ago, when I started my own training and consulting company, I canceled cable so I could save the money and avoid the time lost to channel surfing. And you know what? I haven’t really missed it at all. More about that later.)

Not surprisingly, with these and several more “bad” habits, my life was less successful and less fulfilling than it could have been and should have been. I was trying to do some different things to change my life for the positive, but my bad habits conspired against me. They were taking away my time, sucking away my energy, and stealing my health and vigor. I was at best on a “break even” loop (where your bad habits and good habits roughly balance out to create an average life and existence), and I felt like I was teetering on the edge of a downward spiral.

This had happened to me before. I had let my guard down, and the bad habits snuck back in. I let a few bad habits creep in, and then suddenly saw my life, my health, and my energy all get diminished in a short order of time. Since I had been down this road before, I knew to watch for the telltale signs: loss of energy, increasing frustration both personally and professionally, weight gain, and irritability. Every previous time this has happened in my life, I eventually got around to identifying the few problem habits, worked to create new, more positive replacement habits, and righted my ship toward a better destination (more about that later too!)

Before my little “mini-rut” in late spring/early summer ’06, I had actually gone through three of the most productive and fulfilling years of my life. We had our first child – a beautiful daughter. We upgraded three rooms in our home. I quit my job and started my own business. I grew the business to sustainable profitability in less than 18 months. I wrote my first book. I developed several training program offerings and expanded my product line. I created a full set of marketing and promotional materials for my business, including a leading-edge highly-rated web site (www.randalldean.com). I wrote several articles on my field that were published in impressive business and trade publications. I boasted clients and prospective clients all throughout the United States, including some very highly regarded companies, academic institutions, and professional associations. And I also still gave my wife and daughter (and dog for that matter) first and foremost priority, and together we built a strong family unit full of love and respect. Not a bad three years, eh?

But I had also let several “sneaky” bad habits back into my life during this period of high productivity, including my “Big Two” – the two bad habits that have been my bane my entire adult life: staying up too late, and eating not-so-good foods. As had happened in the past, I had started losing some focus and cutting some corners to try to keep up with my frenetic pace of productivity. I began writing late into the evening and night in an effort to complete my first book, often staying up well past midnight and cutting short my sleep to meet self-imposed deadlines. (Don’t forget that I had a one-year old in the house at the time, with the “bad habit” of being a very inconsistent sleeper. She would often go a few days at a time sleeping normally, and then have several days where she would wake up several times at night. Several times when I stayed up late working, she would then also wake up unexpectedly, leaving me with 3 hours or less of sleep, thus affecting my performance and energy for days.) With an inconsistent schedule and myself as a boss, I started sleeping in late too, to make up for my sleep cycle problems, and got into a pretty nasty self-fulfilling loop.

Also, before starting my own business, I had spent several years being pretty good at following both the “Body for Life” and “South Beach” diets. (By the way, if you can follow them as prescribed, they DO work!). For a few years, I had been eating a high protein, low/good carb, and relatively low fat diet with pretty good workouts. And I was holding my weight nicely. But I think the sleep deprivation and related low energy knocked my will down a bit, and next thing you know I was eating pizza and ice cream again. I gained back most of my 25 pound weight loss in only 6 months, and my energy and productivity suffered even more. This, along with several other identified “bad habits”, conspired to put me in a “rut”.
This book is an effort to both share with you my path for getting out of this particular “rut”, and to also use good habits to reduce or eliminate any future ruts and get to a level of sustained performance, productivity, and personal fulfillment over the (hopefully) long remainder of my life. Why share a story like this? Because this fight with bad habits is nearly universal. Nearly all of us have at least one or two bad habits (I’d daresay most of us have many more than that – wait until you see the list of bad habits I came up with for myself later in the book). If you can see another person’s success (namely ME) in overtaking and defeating his/her bad habits, that may create a similar plan and pathway for you to follow. So, enjoy my story, but more importantly, create a great new habit right now: learn from my story, and apply what you’ve learned!

Preface to The Habit Flip

The best way to get out of a rut is one or two good new habits.

Preface

I think you may find this as a very interesting and somewhat different self-help/personal development book. Why is it interesting and different? Well, because the author (yours truly) is actually living the system I am writing about while I am writing the book (and for those of you on www.blogger.com or www.blogspot.com, you can read this "real time") . I am the first subject to actually go through the system!

In essence, you are reading a real-time journal of my efforts to dramatically change my life through a simple process of identifying my bad habits and then replacing those bad habits with new positive ones. You’ll benefit from my information gathering and research on habit establishment and replacement, and also my first-hand experience in changing my own life through this process.

Throughout the book, I’ll be periodically giving updates of my own personal progress using my own system. You’ll see how my book and my life unfolds throughout the process of developing and using my “Habit Flip” system. I’ll share the good and the bad, the hard and the easy. And at the end, you’ll see what I’ve been able to accomplish following this system (if anything at all).

This book is definitely not rocket science. I would call it “advanced common sense”. But sometimes, just by seeing a path of success tread by another, it will give you an idea on how to tread a similar path of success for yourself. And it will have some top-of-the-line thinking and research included, so you can have confidence that you can make these changes too.

As you proceed through the book, I recommend that you also live the process as you are reading the book. Then you can see how well you are doing vs. me (using me as a measuring stick per se). Honestly, my personal belief is that reading a self-help book without actively participating in the exercises and strategies shared in the book is pretty much a waste of time. Why read about making your life better if you aren’t willing to make your life better? So give this process a try. I think in this circumstance, the process is both simple and somewhat easy. Nothing too advanced here – this book will be filled with very pragmatic and practical information and strategies designed to change your life for the better NOW. Not two years from now. Not five years from now. RIGHT NOW. So get going! Make your life better. Start a new positive habit right here and now, and turn the next page (read the next blogpost)!

Randy Dean
July 5, 2006