That’s an excellent question. Since you’ve determined what your habit is, there are two things you can do to immediately gain traction on overcoming it.

Note that I said ‘habit’ and not ‘problem,’ Mara. What you have is a result that’s created by a repeated behavior, and you want to simply replace it with a different behavior to get a different result.

Side note: It’s important to frame it this way because we feel weak against ‘problems’ (they seem outside of our control) … but ‘behaviors,’ those we can change because we’re in 100% control of what we do next.

back to your question. First, get to the root of why you’re repeating the issue. Let’s say you’re not specific enough about your tasks. Why is this behavior thriving? Maybe it’s because you haven’t committed to writing them down. Maybe because you have things written down in 5 different places.

But (as I’m sure you understand, as a mom) it’s like dealing with kids. Why does Jon always write on the walls? Maybe it’s because Dad keeps forgetting to put his whiteboard markers away. (Wait, that’s *my* problem, not yours). But you see what I mean. The first reason your behavior is thriving is because you’re allowing certain situations to exist to make it thrive.

So by figuring out what the root causes are, it’s usually fairly simple to come up with a solution. If you’re not specific enough about your tasks, then sit down with a pen/computer and invest the time in writing it out.

That brings us the the second part though – how do you ’shake’ yourself of the behavior when you backslide or feel no motivation?

What you do there is you talk yourself out of it ahead of time. Come up with something you can say to yourself to defuse the bad habit, and practice it so when the ‘moment of choice’ occurs, you’re ready. “Even though writing out all my tasks seems like a pain, I’m going to do it because I want to get things done so I can provide for my family – while working fewer hours.”

You find something that resonates with you, and you practice talking yourself out of the bad behavior. It takes practice, but it works. Once you get straight ahead of time how much you really don’t want the old behavior, you’ll find it easier to walk away from it in the moment of choice.

(This was a long reply, and I hope I answered your question. If you need me to be more specific, please reply here in the comments thread and I’ll be glad to answer you.)

You can do anything, Mara –

Dave