Boring Is Undefeated: 5 Unexciting Habits That Fix My Week
This week I replied to a post from Justin Welsh that said, more or less, the stuff that actually changes your life is incredibly boring. Read more. Work out. Take walks. Have honest conversations.
My reply was three words before I got going: boring is undefeated.
Nobody goes viral for a 20-minute walk and one honest conversation. But that combo has fixed more of my weeks than any app I’ve ever paid for. The exciting stuff gets the likes. The boring stuff gets the results.
So here are five boring habits I keep coming back to. None of them are new. All of them work when I actually do them.
1. Have the conversation you’re avoiding
Dan Martell posted that your business is stuck at the level of the conversation you keep avoiding. I’ve watched that play out on teams for years.
A team can stall for months over one unsaid thing. A rep who’s frustrated and doesn’t say it. A leader who knows something’s off and waits for it to fix itself. Meanwhile, the 10-minute talk that would have cleared it up keeps getting pushed to next week.
Clarity is cheap. Silence rents space in your head at premium rates.
The habit: If a conversation has been on my mind for more than two days, it goes on the calendar. Not “when the timing’s right.” This week.
2. Praise in public, coach in private, gossip never
Sahil Bloom wrote about defaulting to praise for people who aren’t in the room. I learned that one the hard way leading a sales team.
Everyone hears how you talk about the person who just left the room. And every one of them assumes that’s how you talk about them when they leave.
You can have the best training in the world, but if the leader gossips, nobody feels safe enough to be coached.
The habit: Praise in public. Coach in private. Gossip never. It’s the cheapest culture upgrade there is, and it costs exactly zero dollars.
3. Cut and automate before you delegate
Codie Sanchez shared a simple order of operations for getting time back: cut it, automate it, delegate it.
The letter most people skip is the middle one. I used to type every meeting recap by hand. Now that’s automated, and honestly the recaps come out cleaner than mine ever did, which is mildly insulting.
Nick Huber asked a related question this week: how much of your day could be done by someone else? Most leaders I coach find that a big chunk of their week is work they should have handed off months ago. The audit isn’t hard. Living with what it reveals is.
The habit: Before I hand a task to a person, I ask two questions. Does this need to happen at all? If it does, can a system do it? Only then does it go to someone on the team.
4. Swap “I am” for “I have a tendency to”
I hear “I’m not a salesperson” in interviews constantly. Nobody was at first. Including me.
Simon Sinek shared an idea from Amy Morin that I use all the time. Swap “I am bad at this” for “I have a tendency to…”
- “I’m not a salesperson” becomes “I tend to get quiet around strangers.”
- “I’m bad with rejection” becomes “I tend to take a no personally.”
- “I’m not a leader” becomes “I tend to wait for someone else to go first.”
“I am” is a verdict. A tendency is a habit, and habits can be coached.
The habit: When I catch myself or someone on my team saying “I am” about a weakness, we rewrite the sentence out loud.
5. Be bad at it while nobody’s watching
Dan Martell posted a list of things you don’t need to start: your boss’s blessing, one more course, 10K followers. I’d add one more: a perfect logo.
I restarted my X account at 218 followers, with posts getting about 5 views. The first 10 posts were rough. The next 10 were slightly less rough. That’s the whole secret.
Nobody’s watching yet, which is the best time to be bad at something. You get to practice in an empty room.
The habit: Ship the rep, not the masterpiece. Then do it again tomorrow.
The short version
- Put the avoided conversation on the calendar this week.
- Praise in public, coach in private, gossip never.
- Cut it, then automate it, then delegate it.
- Turn “I am” into “I have a tendency to.”
- Start before you’re good, while the room is still empty.
None of this will trend. That’s kind of the point. The habits that compound are the ones that look too simple to matter.
Which boring habit has done the most for your week? I’m collecting the good ones on X.
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