Knowing Isn't Doing: Small Habits to get Things Done

You attend a workshop and learn a better way to manage your email, calendar, priorities, or workload.

It makes complete sense.

You leave determined to work differently.

Three weeks later, you are working almost exactly the way you did before.

Sound familiar?

One of the biggest challenges in workplace learning has very little to do with learning. Most of us already know many of the things we should be doing.

We know we should plan our day. We know we should protect time for important work. We know we don't need to respond to every email the moment it arrives.

Knowing isn't usually the problem.

Doing it consistently is.

The gap between understanding a better behaviour and actually making it part of how we work is where many good intentions disappear.

Research into habit formation helps explain why. Habits do not simply appear because we decide to change. They develop through repetition, often in a consistent context. One widely cited study found enormous variation in how long it took behaviours to approach automaticity, from 18 to 254 days. Interestingly, missing one opportunity did not significantly derail the process.

More recent research has examined habits specifically in the workplace. A 2024 study found that employees who developed greater automaticity around new work behaviours also reported greater goal progress and work engagement. The researchers also found that making specific plans about when, where, and how a behaviour would happen helped support repetition and habit development.

That has an important implication for anyone trying to change how they work.

Don't simply decide what you are going to do differently. Decide when you are going to do it.

Instead of:

"I need to plan my priorities more consistently."

Try:

"Before I finish work each afternoon, I will identify my three priorities for tomorrow."

Instead of:

"I need to stop checking email constantly."

Try:

"When I begin focused work, I will close my inbox and Teams for 30 minutes."

The difference seems small, but it moves an intention closer to a repeatable behaviour.

And repetition matters more than perfection.

Miss Tuesday? Start again Wednesday.

Forget to plan one afternoon? Do it the next day.

Too often, when a new system doesn't immediately stick, we assume the system failed. Then we search for another app, another technique, or another way of working.

Sometimes the better answer is much less exciting.

Keep doing it.

At Priority Management, we have spent decades helping people develop better ways of working. But learning a technique is only the beginning. The real value comes when that technique becomes part of what you actually do every day.

Because the true measure of learning isn't what you know when you leave the classroom.

It's what you're still doing months later.