Habits are essential for any event business owner, but for event professionals, they’re particularly critical. A high-stress environment, work on nights and weekends, and client pressures often mean that event pros let their healthy business habits slide.
Keep your portfolio updated, blog regularly, do your marketing, and stay on top of your bookkeeping. These are all habits that get pushed aside when things get busy. And no wonder. The event industry is uniquely challenging. And that makes maintaining good business habits all the more important. And that’s why we’ve gathered some recommended reading for event pros all about habits.
So grab a cup of tea, settle back, and get inspired.
What Are Habits?
When we talk about our habits, we’re actually discussing our automatic methods of behaving. We’re talking about all the little things we do on autopilot that we only think of in retrospect when asked.
They tend to be difficult little things to give up. It turns out you never forget a habit, no matter how long ago you relearnt or retrained it. Your daily life runs on habits. About 45% of everything you do is habitual and done on autopilot. And it turns out habits aren’t as easy to get rid of. Research shows that it does not take 21 days to change a pattern, but rather 66 days on average to change the way you automatically do something. Now, why are you reading about habits?
It turns out that habits are a large part of owning and running an event business. Both the habits of your customers and your habits contribute to the success of your company. Having effective habits at work makes life much easier because, at some point, the 45% of what you do on autopilot will translate to your work. Suddenly many of the menial tasks that are pretty draining won’t even take a thought.
Related: 10 Effective Ways of Dealing with Event-Related Stress
Understanding How Habits Work
To understand how habits work and how you can effectively trick yourself into forming good ones, we suggest consulting the experts. Hence a list of ten books that will help with the formation of good habits to cultivate for your business. And maybe just give you a bit more insight into yourself.
1. The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg
Here Charles Duhigg, an award-winning business reporter for the New York Times, explores the scientific side of habits, looking at discoveries and studies that explain habits. Why do they exist? And how can habits be changed? A well of information that gives you a deeper look into what habits actually are instead of just how to change them. This is a book that takes a look at the neuroscience of the subject. This book focuses on how to harness the science of habits to transform your business and life.
2. The Eighth Habit by Stephen R. Covey
So you have heard about his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, but have you heard about the sequel? Many years after the publication of his world-changing and world-renowned book, he found the world to be a different place. To adapt to this new way of living, Stephen R. Covey concludes that we need a new habit to thrive and survive today. This is the book that will tell you about what this new habit is.
3. Drive by Daniel H. Pink
If ever you wondered about where motivation comes from, how to motivate yourself, and how to just plain do the thing, this is the book that you need to read. Drive brought the boundary-shattering idea that motivation does not stem from rewards but from a deep-seated desire to create and simply do better.
4. Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength by Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney
Self-control is a virtue that few possess. According to Baumeister’s research, the average person spends four hours a day resisting temptation. In Willpower, this conundrum is addressed, and methods to improve self-control are neatly laid out. These strategies will help you use less and less energy as temptation resistance becomes less work and more of a habit. The book is full of modern lessons in willpower for an age that is bursting with temptation.
5. The Habit Blueprint: 15 Simple Steps to Transform Your Life by Patrik Edblad
Written by a certified mental trainer, who has helped more than 400 clients implement and sustain massive changes in their daily lives, this book educates from start to finish. It is especially useful if you prefer lists and numbers, with steps and a workbook. Habit-change utilizing ready-to-use exercises is the main focus here.
6. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
Here the world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S Dweck, Ph.D., uses her decades of research and experience to carry across the potent yet straightforward message: our success is determined by how we think about our talents and abilities. Taking an in-depth look into concepts such as fixed mindset, Dweck helps readers realize how you think will make or break your ability to accomplish great things.
7. Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results by Stephen Guise
A mini habit is a small but very positive behavior that you force upon yourself daily. This small habit is the perfect building block for those more considerable changes. It’s a new strategy that makes so much sense you almost can’t believe you hadn’t thought of it before this.
8. Atomic Habits by James Clear
You’ve probably heard about Atomic Habits before. It’s been on many a bookshelf and might already be on yours. This book will help you rewire how you think about success and progress and equip you with methods to make time for your new habits. Even when life gets a little crazy. Atomic Habits will neatly explain, and help you overcome, a lack of motivation and willpower. And will help you design and tweak your environment to facilitate success.
9. The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker
Many people confuse being efficient with being effective. Being efficient means getting things done when they need to get done, but being effective is getting the right things done. In The Effective Executive, Drucker identifies and teaches five practices essential to businesses’ effectiveness. Perfect for any event pro who might need a little help with getting the right things done instead of getting all things done.
10. The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp
According to Twyla Tharp, creativity is not something one is born with nor something magically bestowed upon you. She believes creativity is the product of effort and preparation. Using lessons learned during her thirty-five-year career, she shares exercises that she implements when stuck in a creative rut. The Creative Habit is filled with the tools to exercise your creative muscle and make creativity not only a distant dream but a habit.
Every Event Pro Should Keep Learning
There are, of course, many more books that cover habits and many that are maybe more tailored to your specific needs or business, but this little list of ten books is a good starting point. Especially when the options out there seem so vast. Each book that you find might lead you to another life-changing discovery – a discovery that could change the way your entire event business operates. And having a starting point can’t hurt.
And one good habit is checking in daily with your event planning software, like ThymeBase.