We all have habits, good and bad. Some of them are personal, and others are work-related.
Research shows that it takes 18 to 254 days to acquire a habit, and while we’ve often heard that it takes 21 to 28 days to shake one, that’s not necessarily true. Breaking habits depends on numerous factors, such as the strength of the motivation to lose them and the consequences of the habit.
When our bad habits are related to work, they can have adverse effects on our professional lives, as well as those of others. While there are no quick fixes, there are technological tools to help us conquer those poor routines, even if they have become ingrained.
What Are Bad Work Habits—and Why Do They Matter?
A one-off mistake is not a habit. Habits are cycles—regular behaviors and actions that are ingrained and become a vicious cycle.
When you have taken on bad work habits, they impact your career. They reflect poorly on you as an individual and make your colleagues and managers think less highly of you. You could miss out on growth and advancement opportunities. If these habits take a serious toll on your performance, then they could mean that you’ll be reprimanded—or even terminated in severe cases.
Bad work habits also affect your colleagues. If you frequently miss deadlines, for example, your coworkers may need to pick up the slack. Or if you’re disorganized, that quality could derail a project. This can lead to resentment, confusion, and other negative feelings.
Therefore, it’s best to nip bad work habits in the bud, before they escalate and have serious consequences.
10 Bad Work Habits and How to Fix Them
1. Succumbing to Digital Distractions
The digital world offers plenty of opportunities and entertainment, but it’s a bit of a double-edged sword since it can also mean distractions. From an almost overwhelming amount of online content to social media apps, the internet is a wealth of material—material that prevents many people from engaging in their work when they should.
In fact, the average worker spends 12% of their work time using unproductive social media apps. And that’s just one piece of the many distractions that are available online, just a click away.
What can we do? Those of us who have the willpower to resist all day are the lucky ones. But most of us need alternative ways to avoid going down an online rabbit hole. Fortunately, there are tools to help.
In fact, there is tech that can prevent you from getting distracted by tech! Website blocker apps are one example of this. Using these tools, you can block a specified list of applications and/or websites on your devices for periods of time you have established. Examples include Freedom, SelfControl, and Focus. There’s also PawBlock, which shows you cute animal pictures instead of allowing you to succumb to digital distractions on your blocked list.
2. Arriving to Work Late
Some people are late people. If you’re one of them, you’ve likely annoyed friends and family on occasion with your tardiness. But when you’re late to work—whether you work onsite or remotely—you could be jeopardizing your reputation, not to mention your entire job.
Being punctual is critical in the workplace. It’s another habit that affects not just you but everyone around you. Therefore, if tardiness is a frequent issue for you, you need to do something about it.
Technology alone won’t fix this bad habit, but it can be a tool that will aid your own efforts toward improvement. For example, if you’re often late because you keep hitting the snooze button on your phone, keep your phone far away from your bed. Consider setting wake-up alarms on multiple devices, such as a smartwatch and a phone too.
3. Procrastinating
We all put off things we need to do until tomorrow, or the next day, or the next day, on occasion. It’s so easy to tell ourselves that we’ll have ample time to finish everything we need to do—eventually. But if you’re constantly leaving important tasks and projects until the very last minute, then you certainly can’t be investing the time and effort into them that is necessary for producing good work. It’s also possible that assignments will slip through the cracks.
You probably already know that procrastination—and even worse, missing deadlines—is hurting you work-wise. It’s not great for your mental health either, since you’ll constantly be thinking about everything you still need to do.
There are plenty of tools that can help you keep your projects on track and maintain productivity. Consider project management software like Trello, BaseCamp, Wrike, and similar applications.
These types of tools can be used at both an individual and enterprise level, encouraging everyone to avoid succumbing to procrastination and stay on track with small and large projects. The software can also help you break down projects into manageable components, each with unique resources and due dates.
And don’t forget about distraction blockers. These tools can also help you combat tendencies toward procrastination and maintain your focus.
4. Communicating Poorly
Communication is an important skill in the workplace. So much depends on its fluidity, consistency, and quality. And when it’s lacking, there can be myriad problems—sometimes even catastrophic ones—from conflict to project standstills.
Perhaps you read an email and tell yourself you’ll respond later—only to forget about it for days, then weeks, then months. Or maybe you don’t understand the instructions, and decide to just figure it out rather than asking for much-needed clarification. Maybe your tone is impolite, or your body language is off—and yes, that’s a type of communication.
It’s true that technology can’t fix all of these problems, but it can help with many of them. For example, you can schedule notifications and flag important emails and messages to ensure you follow up. You can also use a range of tools to communicate with your coworkers. As you gain familiarity with them, you will begin to understand when it’s appropriate to use, say, Zoom or Slack.
For instance, perhaps you realize over-the-phone or email communication isn’t cutting it for a particular assignment or conversation. You should turn to a video conferencing tool to help you get your message across in a face-to-face context.
5. Self-Isolating
Our working lives have gone increasingly remote. There are numerous benefits to remote work, but along with the flexibility and better work-life balance are some detractors, such as increased isolation. And isolation isn’t unique to the work-from-home model—it can happen even when you go into a workplace every day too.
Self-isolating is a negative work habit that we may fool ourselves into believing is positive by saying, “Well, I’m just working too hard to socialize.” But isolation can have consequences that impact our work and our mental health overall. Humans are social creatures by nature, so it’s only natural that we need to enjoy interactions and camaraderie with others.
One way to combat that isolation, particularly in a remote work setting, is to engage in regular team video conferences. During these meetings, look for opportunities to actively participate and establish camaraderie with others. Turn your camera on if possible, and use reactions—you don’t even need to speak!—to connect with others in small ways.
Even occasional Slack chats and check-ins can help you and your colleagues feel less alone. A simple “Hey, how are you doing?” can go a long way in helping yourself and others get through the day.
6. Succumbing to Disorganization
Some of us have cluttered desks. Some of us have cluttered lives.
Do you have trouble keeping track of your appointments and meetings? Are your documents and files jumbled, such that you have trouble remembering deadlines and finding everything you need? Being disorganized can wreak havoc on your work life—and your personal life, for that matter—and mean that you’re not doing the best job you could be. Maybe you show up to meetings unprepared or miss important emails and communications. That’s a recipe for disaster.
There are plenty of technological tools to help you stay organized and remove the clutter. There’s no longer any need to rely on physical filing cabinets. Something as simple as a Google calendar will help you keep track of appointments and deadlines, as well as send you reminders so you don’t miss anything important. Meanwhile, cloud storage tools like Google Drive and Dropbox will allow you to archive and save files, preventing them from cluttering your devices.
There are also apps to help you declutter and organize your inbox. For example, Clean Email includes an array of tools that assist you with cleaning out your email, such as automating tasks, deleting messages in bulk, grouping similar messages together, sorting emails, and presenting different views and displays. That makes it much easier to maintain a cleaner, more user-friendly inbox.
7. Taking Constructive Criticism Personally
Most professionals receive feedback at work on a regular basis. Hopefully, this feedback is constructive and gives you actionable ways to improve your efforts and performance.
Even for the most resilient among us, it can be difficult to accept criticism, even if it actually is constructive. But we must remember that nobody is perfect and there is always room for growth and learning.
While there are no quick fixes for helping you take constructive criticism and feedback personally, there are tools for helping you gather and accept feedback. When you receive more of it, you will ultimately become more capable of learning from it and acting on it, thus promoting our professional development and confidence.
For example, collaboration tools like Google Docs make it possible to deliver and receive feedback on specific projects in real time. Anonymous digital surveys allow team members to evaluate their colleagues, reports, and managers.
If you want to keep track of your feedback and progress, consider using a simple tool like Google Sheets or Excel, in which you can record positive and constructive feedback and monitor your progress. This will also help you focus on the positive, rather than dwell on the negative.
8. Multitasking
We are all guilty of multitasking to some extent. And while we might think it’s a way of accomplishing many responsibilities at once and saving time, the truth is that the opposite is true—it makes us less productive. Only 2.5% of people can actually multitask effectively, according to research.
It doesn’t seem like a bad work habit. But it is.
So, the quick fix is to dedicate your attention to one project or task at a time. Sure, you can switch between responsibilities, but don’t try to do everything at the same time.
If you’re thinking that the quick fix sounds a little too difficult, consider using tools to help you focus on a single task in a given moment. Focus Booster is one example of an app designed for this very purpose. Based on the Pomodoro timer and method, it helps you concentrate on a given task for 25 minutes in total, with a five-minute break. The app also offers time-tracking and reporting features so that you can see your statistics and progress.
9. Not Setting Goals
You could very well be making meaningful progress in your work life, but how will you know if you don’t set and track meaningful goals for yourself? In the professional world, you simply can’t play it by ear. You need to make yourself accountable so that you can demonstrate your value as a worker.
Many people use SMART goals to set and track their objectives. The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant/Realistic, and Time-bound. Using this framework is a helpful way of establishing goals that you can actually meet.
Many of the tools we have already mentioned will allow you to further your goals and stay on track, such as project management software and calendars. Plus, consider these additional tools.
ClickUp is one example. The software breaks up longer goals into smaller, achievable components. Through the tool, you can name the goal, set a due date, add participants, and much more. Todoist, meanwhile, calls itself a task manager and to-do list that allows individuals to stay focused and organized in work and in life.
If you need a little extra motivation, consider the accountability app Goal Buddy, which enables you to manage your goals, track progress, and see meaningful results.
10. Overworking
Yes, overworking yourself is a bad work habit, just like any other on this list—and it’s an extremely dangerous one. A study by the World Health Organization (WHO) shows that overwork and burnout contributed to over 745,000 deaths around the world in a single year.
We live in a world that seems to value working nonstop, but we need to stop glamorizing overwork. The consequences are too severe. Yes, productivity is important, but not taking breaks doesn’t actually lead to greater productivity—in fact, the reverse is true.
How can you complete all of the responsibilities on your plate without succumbing to overwork and—eventually—burnout? It’s not easy to turn off that switch that tells you to keep working, especially if you’re a high achiever, but it’s possible with the help of some key tools.
For starters, make sure you turn off work mode at the end of every day and when you’re on vacation. You can use the same distraction-blocking apps as you do to stay on track at work for your work email!
You can also set digital reminders telling you when to take breaks. And during those breaks, consider tapping into mindfulness and wellness apps like Headspace.
There are also company-wide initiatives employers can take to reduce burnout and promote wellness in their team members. Time-tracking software, which measures productivity and time investment, is controversial, but when it is used responsibly, it can encourage individuals to work smarter, not harder, and prevent burnout. Employers should also remind their teams to unplug when they’re not on the clock.
Positive Work Habits Matter
We have already said it, but it bears repeating: technology alone will not combat your bad work habits. But it can work together with you to help improve what you do and how you do it every day. It can be a useful tool in allowing you to conquer these habits once and for all and bring your best self to work—a critical step in growing in your career, working well with others, and being the professional you are capable of being.
Positive work habits matter—so do the work and bring them to the workplace.
