1. Procrastinate
This one habit is so pervasive and so powerful that I suspect it is the one thing that nearly all ineffective people have in common.* Any task, from the smallest to the largest, from picking up your socks to a big work project, can be screwed up by putting it off. The wife will end up picking up your socks, and you will probably get the project done, but just won't be as good as it should be, or someone else will have to help you finish it. Need to exercise? Start tomorrow! Tomorrow you can put it off again. Going to start a diet? Finish off those M&M's first -- you already bought them, can't let them go to waste. Procrastination can be applied to nearly anything, and it is guaranteed to make you less effective.
*I say "nearly" all because I recently met a highly ineffective person who was a type of anti-procrastinator. Any problem, no matter how complex, she would come up with a solution within minutes, if not literally seconds, and would be hell-bent on implementing it if no one stopped her. I suspect that this is even more ineffective than procrastination, because it means trying to solve problems without actually thinking about them first; however, it is very unusual in my experience, not a common trait of ineffective people.
2. Go for the B
There will always be people who want to excel at everything they do; from school to work to everyday tasks to their hobbies, they like being the best. That means, by definition, someone has to be not as good as they are, and this can be you. Those overachievers are working their buns off to do everything as well as they do; with considerably less effort, you can just be OK, hopefully doing enough to keep your spouse from leaving and your boss from firing you.
3. Failure Is an Option
On those occasions when even going for the "B" seems like too much effort, you can actually fail altogether, and the world won't come to an end. Didn't bother to pay the bill? They'll send you another with an extra charge next month. Don't want to fix dinner? You can eat out. Didn't do that project at work? Maybe you can find another job, if they bother to fire you. It's hard to screw up so badly that your life falls apart completely.
Sure, when astronauts returning from the moon are running low on oxygen, and you need to make sure they don't run out, failure is not an option. But let's face it, if you can master even a few of the seven habits of highly ineffective people, no one is ever going to give you that kind of responsibility. You won't ever find yourself in that type of situation.
4. Be Afraid
Be afraid to take a risk, to try something unfamiliar. Whether it's something small like learning to cook, or something larger like moving across the country, fear of the unknown can keep you from moving forward. I think this habit is an underrated reason why some people manage to avoid accomplishing all they could. Many of us (and "us" most definitely includes me) go through life generally making the safe choices, taking the path of least resistance. Go to school, go to school some more, get a job working for someone, put money in your 401K, make safe investments. Fear keeps us from starting a new business, changing careers, running for office, or becoming on-line poker players. Those things might not have worked out anyway. We'll never know.
5. Dabble
Try a lot of different things, but don't put too much effort into any one of them. Keep moving on to something new. The important concept here is "diminishing marginal returns." Here's how they work: Let's say you want to learn to play golf. It's a tough game; if you just go out and play, you'll be pretty bad. However, take a lesson or two, hit some balls at the range, play a few rounds, and you will start to improve. But to get to the point that your scores are consistently under 100, you are going to have to do much more, probably devote time every week to playing, take some more lessons, lots of practice. And by the time you try to get your handicap down to single digits, you are going to be playing golf all the time and probably spending some serious money just to make the slightest improvements. The better you get, the more work it takes to get even better.
It's a lot easier to just take up skiing before you get in too deep.
6. Sleep In
The corollary to sleeping in is usually staying up late, and what are you doing during those late hours? Working in the yard? Running errands? Exercising? No, usually people who stay up late are pursuing some leisure activity, watching television, Facebooking, playing video games, reading. And this is the secret to sleeping in; you are trading potentially productive time for time spent having fun.
7. Video Games
I know that we wasted lots of time when we were kids, but it is almost hard to imagine how we managed it as well as we did without this incomparable time-wasting invention. Video games are just the perfect way to sit and waste hours, days, weeks, years, and they have the added bonus of allowing you to isolate yourself from other people. This is one area where you don't have to go for the "B" or dabble to be ineffective; feel free to waste your life away becoming the very, very best at Angry Birds, Everquest, Zuma's Revenge, or whatever your favorite obsession may be.
Video games can also be your go-to activity when you are exercising the other six ineffective habits, the thing you do when you are putting off something more important, avoiding being the best, staying up late. Video games can be the mechanism that makes all of the other habits work.
Unlike the seven habits of highly effective people, the seven habits of highly ineffective people are easy to implement. If you have read this entire post, you have already found an alternative to doing anything useful for at least a few minutes. Now just keep up the momentum!
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