Habits | The secret to exceptional outcomes

Over the last 2.5 years, LinkedIn has become the social media platform that I use the most. I rely on LinkedIn for almost all my business connects, but it wasn’t so before. Earlier I relied on referrals, networking events, the works. Still do, but LinkedIn is where I check out the competition and the stakeholders. I remember thinking couple of years ago about why would people come to my profile? What about my profile will give them an idea about who or what I am or my offerings? I started with doing daily posts, sometimes sharing a personal story, another time using an image. Everyday that I published something, it was the star of my day. It made me feel that I was actually contributing in some way to my network. 

The newness fizzled out though. I was constantly trying to think of even more intense things that I could write and publish. It was wiring me up the wrong way. Publishing had to make me feel good and not constantly challenged. I let it go, posting sporadically over a week. I engaged with people who responded, but really there wasn’t any magic to it. 

Last year, something changed. I read an article on LinkedIn- and I don’t remember today about what it was or who was the author, but I remember sitting back and thinking- wow, that article is perfect! What if I could write like that! I was blown away by the articulation and the stories. It didn’t stick with me that’s another matter. 

I made up my mind to put out two articles every week. The only weeks where I let myself off were for family holidays and for the week of Christmas and New Years. I started writing- just like that. I didn’t worry about the daily posts- if I had something to share I would, else no biggie! But the perfectionist (now recovering) that I was, I wanted every article to be perfect, it had to convey exactly what I wanted it to say and sometimes that delayed it. But I did keep to two articles a week, even if I had to post on a Sunday. Again the stress was back. When I published something it felt great, other times I was constantly fretting if the article was good enough or not. 

That took a toll. I was constantly worried about the articles going out and snapped at my husband once. He said you want the articles to go out right, just let the readers decide if they are perfect or not. Publish your first draft and take it from there. So I let go off the “perfect” and began publishing my best effort at one go. The stress dropped, drastically. 

After the stress dropped, I looked at ways to make it easy. The idea was simple- To make my profile visit worthy on LinkedIn by publishing two articles every week. To make it easy, I didn’t lose sight of the bigger reward here and that was me feeling good about contributing in some way to my network. 

Even today as I publish my 100th article (and I say this conversationally, but really I am just over the moon), I feel the same excitement that I did when I published my 1st. 

My routine was simple. In order to publish I had a few sub- habits. Practicing those meant that I would have my articles ready, no matter if I couldn’t spend time on them at one go. 

1. I started recording notes and writing my thoughts in the Notes app of my phone. These would be inspiration for the stories that I would use in my articles. You will have noticed that most of my articles start with stories.

2. My goal was to amass at least 3 such stories over the week, sometimes it was just a one liner that would trigger my thought process.

3. The first thing that I do every Monday irrespective of what has planned for me is start writing the first article. I don’t check my email or my WhatsApp or my texts. I send the kids off to school and start writing. My notes app is synced with my laptop and I don’t have to touch my phone to start writing. I keep the browser closed.

That’s all that I did. That habit set me up for the 100th article that I publish- the one that you are reading now. 

If I look back there are two things that have stuck with me:

1. I decided to make one change and that was to up my game on LinkedIn

2. I instituted a habit loop. The reward was the same- feeling great and involved right from conceptualising an article to publishing it. I only changed the routine and built in the note taking.

Now every time I start feeling stressed about an article, I pull out the Notes app and start jotting down incidents that I’ve witnessed in the last couple of days. This note taking has become a sub conscious mechanism now. Just the other day we were filling up on gas and another guy was doing something funny on the other side. The husband said “Shivangi, you want to make a note of that? It could help with the articles”. 

Chuckling we left the gas station, but I remember how only a year ago I would have yelled at him to not bother me and how this was important to me. Forming habits takes the stress out of performance- performance is guaranteed as long as you stick to the habit plan.