9 Personal Habits That Will Hurt Your Business

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Procrastinating

Not finishing that college paper until the last minute might have allowed you to squeak by, but in the world of business, if you’re not putting forth your best effort, you’re not getting the best outcome. You’re only cheating the success of yourself and your company when you don’t give a project the time it needs.

Taking the time to finish a project early will also give you the opportunity to go back and revisit it a second or third time. You’d be surprised at how much going over something two or three times can improve the product.

Organization

You can get away with not being organized at home, but being organized is the only way to get through the busy periods in business. Without solid organization, things can cave in on you pretty quickly.

Everything from structuring your day, to business meetings, to organizing employees – it all matters. If you’re not great at it, you’ll be crushed by the weight of what you have to manage. Use these 7 habits of highly organized entrepreneurs to help you out.

Tardiness

What more really needs to be said here. If you’re the type of person that’s constantly late to meetings, you’re being rude and selfish. You need to respect other people’s time. If you don’t, it can really hurt your relationship with them – and your business.

Meetings are all about time. Your time, and the time of the people in the meeting with you. Showing up late is a great way of letting them know you think your time is more important than theirs. Don’t be late.

Overspending

You probably don’t need to be reminded that spending a little extra on dinner is a lot different than spending a little too much on employees or a business lease. If you have a habit of going over the budget, you might as well close up shop today. Overspending in business is a real cause of failure.

Lack of Exercise

This personal habit can affect your longevity at a company. Exercise helps a lot with mental health. If you’re not exercising, you’re not only hurting your physical self, you’re not helping your mental self. Stay sharp by exercising. It will help you make better decisions. If you’re not a big exerciser, here are 5 habits that have huge mental benefits.

Cleanliness

Bad breath, body odor and a general unclean appearance all matter in business. That’s not how cleanliness will hurt you the most though. It’s in your day-to-day operations. How does your office look? How about your car? Your warehouse? Your retail shop?

If you’re not the type of person that has a clean home, you’ll likely take this view to work with you. Clean spaces matter to customers. A direct correlation between cleanliness and profits should be enough to fix this bad habit.

Poor Planning

This could have been lumped in with organization, but deserves a section all to itself. It’s not about planning your day; it’s about planning your business. It’s about how you tackle decision the making process. You can deal with this problem by using special planning apps and tools like SupremeDissertations or SmartSheet. If you like to rush planning so you can get to the action part of things, you’ll find you’re going backwards more often than forwards.

Making mistakes that are avoidable takes up time, money and confidence in your staff. Poor planning habits can cost you a lot more than you think.

Reacting Emotionally

If you have a habit of reacting right away to, well, almost anything, this can hurt you in business. Taking your time and finding out why something has happened is better than the “shoot first, ask questions later” policy.

Quite often things are not as they first appear. Dealing with co-workers and team members is a lot more complex. You have to consider quite a few factors before handing out the judgment. Including thinking about how your actions will affect those not directly involved.

Excessive Alcohol

Not just talking about alcoholism here. This is about casual drinking. Many times in business alcohol is a great social facilitator. Many meetings happen at bars and evening social events for this reason.

This is different than when you have a few drinks with friends. You’re making valuable business connections, making business decisions, and you’re the face of whomever you’re representing. Have a drink, but make sure you know the limit. The best part about bad habits is that they’re entirely fixable. Habits can be changed in as little as 30 days. Get to work and be a better you. Your company will that you for it.