When Your Good Habits No Longer Serve You (Productive Flourishing Pulse #490)
How to decide if and how to continue them
As I approach the end of my year of haiku practice, I’ve been wondering about continuing. Yesterday’s haiku captured this rumination:
Tough to abandon
hard-won habits, even when
they no longer serve
As I’m trying to find the additional capacity to work on the book project that’s grown out of that practice, I’ve been wondering if the practice itself is still serving its original purpose, or if it’s eating focus blocks I could put to better use.
I’ve talked about routines audits before, as a tool for assessing the cost and effectiveness of those routines/habits/practices in your work/business. and in your personal life.
Work routines tend to be easier to drop altogether, when you understand the cost and time savings from eliminating (or automating) the ones that don’t move your objectives forward.
On the personal side, sometimes elimination is hard to do, even as you realize that a good habit is no longer serving you in the way it once did. Like me, you might feel some fear over stopping, because you won’t be able to start again, or you’ll miss it when it’s no longer a regular part of your life.
If you’re not able or willing to let go of that routine completely, perhaps a “retool” or “reschedule” is an option:
Could you reduce the frequency of the thing from every day to a few times a week? Weekly to monthly? Would you still get the benefit (or most of it) without putting as much time in?
Could you take a break from the routine/habit/practice for a while, giving yourself a specific date to check in and perhaps restart it? (This is my likely solution for my haiku practice, once the book work is done.)
Perhaps, though, if the practice has served its purpose in this season, now’s the time to let it go, thank it for its service and what you’ve learned from it, and free yourself from that commitment so you can commit to something new.
~Steve
Help With Your Habits
Letting go of established habits — even when they’re no longer serving us — can be challenging. These resources offer guidance on auditing your routines, recognizing when it’s time for change, and making thoughtful adjustments that free up capacity for your evolving needs.
Take a Moment
A prompt to pause and reflect.
What’s one habit or practice you think might no longer be serving you as it once did? What could you change about it — or could you let it go entirely — in favor of something else?
We’d love to hear what’s coming up for you.
Coming Next Week: Create a Weekly Blueprint That Works For You
Creating an effective weekly schedule isn’t just about finding empty blocks of time. Next week, we’ll explore six essential questions that help you build a weekly blueprint that aligns with your energy patterns, priorities, and work style. Whether you’re looking to protect your focus blocks or better balance your commitments, these questions will help you design a week that supports your best work.
Better Manage Your Team’s Capacity
Capacity is just one aspect of your team’s overall readiness for great work, but it’s an important one. It’s also one that’s often easy to leverage into better outcomes. Here are just some of the workshops we offer that can help your team gauge and improve its routines, capacity, and readiness:
Team Habits
Team Meeting Makeover
Team Readiness
Team Roles and Responsibilities
Explore our different workshops or other ways we can support your team.
Not sure where you might want to start? The free Team Habits Quiz is a great way to identify where your team could benefit from building in more sustainable practices.
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Identify what truly fuels your best work
Create sustainable practices that support your goals
Clear away what's blocking your momentum
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Not sure where you need the most support? Take our free Momentum Quiz to discover your productivity persona and get personalized insights about your natural working style.
In Case You Missed It
February Replays, March Events
Check out this month’s replays explore ways to create sustainable capacity through the power of subtraction:
[Replay] Leadership Strategy Session: Our February 5 session explored how teams can use subtraction to free up capacity and focus on what truly matters.
[Replay coming soon!] Monthly Momentum Call (MMC): Our February 19 session explored practical ways to assess and adjust your personal capacity for sustainable progress.
Paid subscribers get access to both these calls each month, plus the whole replay, notes, and extras. Free subscribers, consider upgrading your subscription to get access to the full replay and invitations to attend live next month!
Save the Dates for Our March Events:
Leadership Strategy Session: March 5, 2025, 11:00 AM PST
Monthly Momentum Call: March 19, 2025, 11:00 AM PST
Morning Pages! Writing three pages long hand every morning helped me adopt a creative (rather than achievement) mindset, but once I was deeply into my book project, the practice became a time-sucking, unrewarding "should." Now, I read poetry. Three poems, every morning. ❤️☘️
A really good post, very thankful and hopeful that you will write many more posts like this one. https://www.mywakeid.com