From the course: Gretchen Rubin on Creating Great Workplace Habits

Habit distinctions

- When you're trying to shape your habits at work, or when you're trying to work with other people and their habits, it's very important to recognize the way that you might be like other people and also different from other people. Understanding the distinctions among people can make it much easier to keep the habits that you want to keep and also work harmoniously with people who might have different habits from you. So for instance, the difference between marathoners, sprinters and procrastinators. Now marathoners are people like me. We like to start early, do a little bit of work each day, have plenty of time at the deadline. They like slow and steady. Now sprinters by contrast they love the adrenaline of a deadline, the crunch, they like the intensity of having to do a lot of work at the last minute. They feel like if they start too early, they lose momentum, they lose interest, they waste time. So they really like to work up against the deadline. Now, the problem comes when you have two kinds of people working together, because the marathoners are driven crazy by the fact that the sprinters aren't working yet, and the sprinters feel like the marathoners are wasting time. As a marathoner, I talked to a woman who said, oh when I have to give a speech, I'm thinking about my subject while they're micing me up backstage. It drives my staff crazy, but that's how I do my best work. Well, for me, creativity flows when I start early, these are two different work styles. And so you have to think about how can different people work together to get the best of both kinds? But it's very important to remember that a sprinter is not the same thing as a procrastinator. Procrastinators wish they could work earlier, but they do all their work up against the deadline because that's what they're forced to do. But a sprinter looks back on their work and thinks I did great work, they like working that way. Procrastinators are often full of regret. They think they could have done a better job if they'd given themselves more time. So if you're a procrastinator, the thing is to schedule yourself, use all your habit energy to start that work early. Because once the work starts, often the anxiety drops and it becomes easier to work as you approach that deadline. So that has to do with the habits related to work pace. Now, there are other habit differences that come into play. One is, are you a finisher or an opener? Now finishers are people like me. We like to finish. We like to cross things off the list. And sometimes we're a little bit too conservative about thinking about starting something new because it's so important to us to know that we're going to be able to finish. Openers by contrast, they love new projects, new ideas. I talked to a law professor who said, oh I've got the syllabi for 15 different classes half finished in my desk drawer, because she loves thinking about starting something new. Well in a workplace it's great to have some of both. You need the people who have the excitement and the energy and the willingness to think about starting something new but you also need the people who are going to get you across the finish line. So you want to be very aware of your own work style and other people's work style so that you can find that right balance so that you open as many projects that are going to make sense for you, but that you also get them finished. Now, another way that differences come to play in the workplace is people who are abundance lovers and people who are simplicity lovers. And this has to do with the kind of environment in which you thrive. So abundance lovers like a lot of buzz, a lot of profusion, a lot of choices, a lot of visual stimulation. Simplicity lovers thrive on quiet, calm, bare walls, clean surfaces. And I remember going into a workspace where it was you know, decorate your cubicle day. And everybody had decorations hanging from the ceilings on all the cubicles and it looked like so much fun, but I thought I could never work here because I'm a simplicity lover. And so when you're creating work environments you have to think about the fact not everyone is going to thrive in the same kind of environment, and so how do you create an environment which is going to really stimulate different kinds of people and how do you manage that?

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