Habits
Habits spell behaviour. Habit is the single most important predictor of your performance in the Project Management Concepts course.
What are habits, and why is it important to think about them?
It’s reasonable to assume that before you signed up for any study programme, your days were filled with many activities other than regular study. Now that you’re studying, some things that currently consume your time and attention will have to go, and the time and energy they consume must to be channelled into your new pursuit of becoming a competent Project Management person.
In practical terms, this means that some of your current habits must give way to new habits, and these new, undeveloped habits may not come naturally for you.
Definition
One definition of habit that Merriam-Webster offers is, “An acquired mode of behaviour that has become nearly or completely involuntary.” We will explore several considerations for relinquishing old habits and acquiring new habits in the light of this definition, especially as it applies to your Project Management competency development.
Leading teams
On your projects, your fellow team members will also need to adopt new habits.
Adopting new habits represents the first green shoots of team culture.
Your first-hand practical experience of shedding old habits and nurturing new ones is invaluable when the time comes for guiding others. The governing disciplines for implementing new habits are necessary for your project processes to work optimally.
It is easy. It is difficult.
Habits include the habit of setting aside a regular, fixed time to study. There are also habits that govern your study process, as well as your habits of thinking and reasoning. Habits are easy to state and to understand. (We don’t have much of a problem calling a habit ‘bad’ or ‘good’ either!) But it is difficult for a new habit to replace an old one, for it to dig or get traction, and to become self-sustaining. It’s not so easy for a new fragile habit to become a strong habit, and to result in a change of one’s lifestyle and way of thinking.
Habits are so easy to pronounce and to wish for, but they are difficult to establish.
For you to be successful in the Project Management Concepts course, you’ll need to develop a few new habits. For instance, it is unlikely that you currently have a specific timeslot set aside in your day for studying. Participants who do well in the PCP are those who, from the first day, focused on establishing habits that will augment their studies.
A popular fallacy
Prior education or current occupation are not the agents that change habits. The truth is that your formal study achievements may lull you into believing that the principle of mastering something is just a ratched-up version of studying to get better marks, and that just a little more of your past academic performance is what’s needed to become competent in all three dimensions of the PMCD Framework.
This is not so. Competency demands a lot more than passing an exam (even in the Project Management Concepts course, where you need 90% to pass the exam, and 100% in each Summative Test along the way).
Participants simply can’t rely on past academic achievements and a traditional study mindset to get through the course That may be why some engineers, architects and other white-collar professionals drop out, while artisans who work at establishing solid study and thinking habits, stick it out and succeed.
Relentless habit-forming eats intellect and talent for breakfast.
