Are bad work habits preventing you from achieving your goals? Experts say business people can easily overcome those bad habits that prevent them from doing their best. Here are some tips:

> All work. “Working all the time” is the No. 1 bad habit among financial advisors and entrepreneurs, says Catherine Nomura of Strategic Coach Inc. in Toronto.

“People work themselves to a point at which they can no longer be creative, and that is often at the root of all other kinds of problems,” she says.

Everything gets more difficult when people have been working too long, Nomura says. Advisors are particularly prone to this, as they work long hours at certain times of the year, such as RRSP season, and often take work home and work weekends.

“For 24 hours, don’t think about work,” she says. “Don’t do any work-related reading, answer e-mails or call the office. If you do that, everything else becomes easier.”

> Clutter. A cluttered workspace prevents people from focusing and distracts clients.
Although an advisor might know where everything is in a cluttered office, a client’s perception is different, says Joanne Ferguson, co-founder and partner of Advisor Pathways Inc. in Stratford, Ont.

“They might think, ‘Do I really want this person to manage my money when their office is a mess?’” she says.

Scheduling time to clean up gives back an enormous amount of mental energy and makes an advisor much more effective, she says.

In the meantime, Nomura suggests, simply leave the cluttered office and work elsewhere — such as a conference room — and have an assistant bring you what you need. It’s like taking a client to lunch.

“At lunch you can be productive, because the staff at the restaurant takes care of everything, and you can focus on whatever business you want to do. In your office, you have stacks of things around you and projects crying out: ‘Me! Me!’,” she says.

> Procrastination. “A lot of people who procrastinate are perfectionists,” Nomura says. The prospect of completing a task — perfectly — can be daunting.

Nomura recommends procrastinators plan to do 80% of what they want to accomplish, then pass it off to someone else:
“Sometimes 80% is good enough; those last bits of improvement are much easier to make once you have feedback from someone, whether it’s a client or someone you are working with on a project.”

> Overscheduling. Advisors want to do more for their clients but often they try to fit more than they can handle into the workweek. As a result, meetings may be rushed, with no time in between for review.

Ferguson recommends more planning.
“Allot an extra 15 minutes after a client meeting to discuss follow-up procedures with team members,” she says. IE