Tony Stubblebine, Co-founder of Lift Habit App

Show Notes:

Tony Stubblebine: Co-founder & CEO of Lift

Habits

Job is constantly changing, so his habits are constantly changing too
In hindsight, wishes he could have created some habits in the past (e.g. recording good soundbites of the sales pitches he used to make)
Number 1 habit at beginning of creating a company: create very detailed task notes (around 50-100 small/trivial task items by the end of a day). Always know what your next step is, even if you get distracted in between tasks.
Write down all the small tasks in a text file as they come up. (e.g. Send this email to Tim. Go to this scheduled meeting. Go to this interview) Delete the written actions that you don’t have time to do.
Continually updating the list shows what you’ve done and shows what you need to do in the moment.
Set priorities for your day.
Create time blocks by the hour to do your tasks (e.g. use an hour for email and another small task).

Behavior Modification

Start with something small and build a reinforcement structure around it.
To create changes in life, you must either have or create the mindset to be open to changing and have the belief that you can change.
If you are in the negative mindset that you can’t change, seeing other people change themselves can help you get into the change-positive mindset. Others can inspire and motivate you–this is why Lift helps so much.

Lift

Helps people create habits by joining a group with other people who are trying to create habits too.
Check off that you did your habit every day.
Motivates people to do their habits when they see other people doing theirs.
Promotes mindfulness, provides motivation.
Similar to the old website 43 Things to help people reach their goals, but instead helps people create the habits they need to achieve those goals.
Tried to build Lift on positivity, makes it easy for users to get back up when they mess up on their habits.

Goals

Enjoy the process along the way to reaching your goals.
Set small independent goals, so if you fail one of them, you can move onto your next goal and still feel good about doing it.
Focus on positives instead of tripping up on failures.
Rack up your successes. Lift helps with this.

Entrepreneurship

Easy to get into the early stages of a business but not actually doing anything, but you have to visualize your goals before really starting the business seriously.
For deciding what you really want to do with your life/your business: think about what you love doing and makes you happy. Get rid of the parts that make you unhappy or stressed. Tony says that Lift should be stressful, but it isn’t; it’s really a joy.

* Work Productivity Habits: How to say no to people nicely*

Talking to recruiters or spammers can take up a lot of your time and decreases productivity.
For Tony, the philosophy for creating these habits is: if I have a rule about it, I can create a habit for it.
Once he understands his personal philosophy behind it, he can create a rule about it–in this case, not working with recruiters because he already has a lot of people he knows personally who he’d rather work with.
For dealing with spammers, recruiters, or telemarketers, the problem is that he’s being mean back to them.
Tony created a system of always being polite and a script to deal with them.
E.g. for recruiters: “thank you for calling. I don’t work with recruiters. [pause] Have a nice day. [pause] [hang up]”
Add these numbers to a “do not answer” phone list.