Drips Add Up to Buckets

Isn’t it amazing that a small leak dripping ever so lightly can quickly fill a bucket?  What may look at first to be just a minor thing can add up in a short time to a small flood.  I remember looking under our sink one day to find a very small amount of water dripping from a connection.  Thinking it wasn’t much and I didn’t have time to make the repair, I placed a pitcher under the drip to prevent the water from soaking the cabinet floor and made a mental reminder to empty the pitcher on a regular basis.  The last thing I wanted was to have the cabinet soaked and rotting with mold.  It wasn’t long however until the pitcher was nearly full and I made it a priority to fix the leak; I couldn’t risk losing the cabinet and having to rip out the entire kitchen sink.

Some habits are just like those pesky drips of water.  They really don’t look like much at first, but little by little they add up until there’s enough to fill a bucket.  Paying attention to your seemingly insignificant habits is more important than you might imagine.  Ignoring them altogether can create a soggy, rotting mess and moldy results.  Take for example your eating habits.  That calorie-rich coffee drink each morning may not seem like much (just a single drip), but over the course of a year or more, those calories add up until one morning you look in the mirror and realize you’ve gained 25 pounds and feel horrible.  Or how about your evening ritual of television instead of investing at least part of that time in self-development?  If you calculated the number of hours spent watching TV compared to reading or studying something that could improve yourself, would you be shocked?  Most of us don’t start out with a large total in mind and intentionally chart a path to get there.  Instead, we simply stumble upon it mostly “by accident” yet it was no accident at all.  In fact, it was quite purposeful yet at the same time mindless.  The little things we do each day can add up to a lot and they can either produce positive or negative results, but they will produce something.

Not all habits are bad.  In fact, positive habits enable us to focus our mental energy on other things requiring more intense thought and consideration.  If we had to purposefully think about everything all the time, we wouldn’t be able to function very well.  The mental inflection point though is in recognizing where habit is running the show and making sure the habits you’re exercising are serving your higher purpose.  One of the things I regularly do is to reflect on and inventory my habits and ask myself if each of them is serving me well.  And when they are not, I set in motion steps to stop the leaking before the bucket gets too full.  Another thing that works for me is to remind myself where habit is operating by making subtle changes on purpose.  For example, most of us have morning and/or evening routines like showering, brushing teeth, hair, etc…  Ever consider making a small, purposeful change in that routine just to increase your awareness of the habits in your life?  What I regularly do is make a deliberate change in my morning or evening routine just to remind myself of the power of habit even when the habit serves me.  It’s a great way to maintain my awareness and enables me to see habit in other areas of my life as well.

So next time you see a dripping faucet or notice a leak, reflect on your habits and make sure you’re not just filling a bucket when you should be working to stop the leak altogether.

Duane Grove is founder of Connect2Action, a strategy execution specialist at the intersection of employee engagement and executive leadership, igniting innovation as a lever to accelerate your growth.  Follow Duane on Twitter @connect2action and connect with him on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.  Learn more by visiting www.connect2action.com.