Introduction
The workplace is one of the places with the highest concentration of stressors. Top stress-generating factors include higher management, rapid changes, tasks that require high skills and competencies, and job insecurity (Lipman, n.d.). I am one of the many working people exposed to these stressors. To protect my mental well-being from these, I have subconsciously developed a defense mechanism, which has become a bad habit. In situations when I feel like I am experiencing workplace stress, I have a habit of checking my phone’s messages and news feeds, which gives me rewards in the form of distraction and stress relief. The benefits that I think I will obtain from hacking this habit are a greater focus on work tasks and higher productivity.
Analysis of the Current Habit Loop
Current Routine
A good start in hacking any habit is observing and studying their habit routine, and I am no exception here. After the first few days of this month-long habit-hacking intervention, I started noticing automatic useless, unproductive, and distracting behavioral patterns in my behavior. The most eye-catching one was the systematic checking of messages and the news feed on my smartphone after I had reached a mental state of perceived stress and mild workplace anxiety. Experts like Lee Newman (2014a) call these things to default responses and automatic behaviors. Checking my smartphone took five to seven minutes, and then I gradually physically and mentally went back to my usual workflow.
There are both professional and personal reasons why I wanted to hack and replace my unproductive habit of mine. Scientists would call this a change of direction of “the power of cravings in creating habits” in one (Duhigg, 2012, p. 51). One of them is that checking a smartphone is a time-consuming practice. I mean that I did this more than two or three times per shift, but I also imply the time it took for my mind and emotional state to return to the work setting from the digital information field. I felt uncomfortable and guilty because I could have spent those minutes solving organizational tasks and productively interacting with colleagues. In addition, such quick smartphone checks made me wish for weekends more and leave the workplace to meet with loved ones and friends. I wanted to prevent the development of such negative professional behaviors and therefore decided to replace my habitual routine.
I decided to replace the habit of checking my smartphone with a short pause for a deep breathing exercise. I chose this alternative because it “offers an extremely simple, effective, and convenient way to relieve stress and reverse your stress response, reducing the negative effects of chronic stress” (Scott, 2020, para. 1). It is an elementary process; I take a comfortable seated position and start breathing deeply and meditatively until I reach ten breaths. My new habit takes less time and, more importantly, provides much better stress relief and psychological relaxation.
Cues
Habits are all about behaviors, and these are all about psychology. The analysis of my behavior has allowed me to identify a couple of external triggers that started my psychological abstraction mechanism. One of them was facing the requirements of the job assignments. The more tasks and goals and the more competence from the assigned responsible person requested from one, the stronger my desire to change my view of the online space in the smartphone was. Newman (2013b) says that “behaviors are what drives success in the workplace” (para. 1). I want to add that bad habits breed procrastination and create failure for their possessors. Another trigger was professional interactions, especially communication, with senior colleagues. These processes also cultivated stress and anxiety in me that I wanted to suppress with my smartphone.
Introspection and academic data have shown me that habit routines are shaped by the regular and gradual influence of positive or negative emotions driven by extrinsic and interpersonal factors. One must note that the two key cues have remained the same in my new habitual loop. It is because their origin is the external environment of the work setting in which my contact with these stress drivers is mandatory and regular.
Rewards
As I noted above, getting rid of stress was the main driver of my previous professional habit loop and the motivator for maintaining it. According to Newman (2013b), a work environment is always a dynamic place. Consequently, it contains many stressors and generates various stress-inducing settings. A secondary reward was the quick escapism that smartphone checks provided. Reading messages and newsfeeds gave me a few minutes of physical and mental relaxation amid a constantly active and dynamic work setting. It can be said that during these checks, I was cooling down and rebooting my overheated cognitive processes and mechanisms.
The major positive impacts of my new habit were described in the Current Routine section. I can say that the only negative reward is that the new breathing exercise takes longer than checking the smartphone. However, I believe that this meditative and slow approach will help me get rid of the perceived workplace stress for good in the long run. It can be concluded that the only new component in my new habit loop is routine.
Behavioral Techniques
Practicing was the primary technique for changing my unproductive habit into a new relaxation habit. I, just like Newman (2013b), believe that “it is a practice that rules the day” (para. 7). A major hurdle was that I was automatically reaching for my smartphone under the influence of ingrained cravings and accumulated stressors for the first two weeks. It was not difficult to learn and perform a new habit; rebuilding the responsible mental chain was a challenge. I also used the method of designing rewards; I have made it my goal to control my perceived stress in the work environment.
Results
I do believe that I have achieved at least the main positive results of this habit-hacking mission. I replaced the time-consuming and useless one with a relaxing and healing one. Moreover, I successfully rebuilt my psychological mechanism for choosing stress relief techniques. The flow of the hacking mission was problematic for the first two weeks, but then my mind adjusted to the necessary but beneficial change. Moreover, I feel that my performance has increased in terms of speed a little.
Conclusion
This habit hacking intervention revealed some personal and professional things to me. In a behavioral change in one’s habit, a person usually decides to replace a useless one with a productive or healing one. Most of the significant obstacles in habit hacking are encountered by the individual up to the middle point of the process. From a managerial perspective, an effective strategy for changing the behavior of staff members develops productive and regular patterns in them. I have learned that changing a habit in people should start with proving its practicality or healthfulness to them.
References
Duhigg, C. (2012). The power of habit: Why we do what we do, and how to change. Random House.
Lipman, V. (2019). Workplace trend: Stress is on the rise. Forbes. Web.
Newman, L. (2014). How to override your default reactions in tough moments. Harvard Business Review. Web.
Newman, L. (2013). Use the New Year to improve your behavioral fitness at work. Forbes. Web.
Scott, E. (2020). How to reduce stress with breathing exercises. Verywell Mind. Web.