Breaking Old Habits to Build Smarter Side Projects

Starting a side project or a tiny business is an exhilarating journey, but it often demands a shift in mindset—especially if your brain is stuck in deeply wired habits that no longer serve you. These patterns, reinforced over years, can subtly undermine your progress. Let’s explore how to recognize and rewire these habits with actionable strategies and real-world examples.

Understanding Habit Loops

Habits are formed through a loop of cue, routine, and reward. For instance, imagine you have a habit of endlessly perfecting every detail in a project. The cue might be starting a new task, the routine involves overanalyzing and refining, and the reward is the fleeting sense of control or accomplishment. This cycle might work in a corporate setting but can stifle momentum in a side hustle.

Identifying Counterproductive Habits

Here are common habits that can derail small ventures and how to address them:

Overplanning Instead of Executing: Spending weeks creating a detailed business plan for a side project before testing if anyone wants the product. Adopt a “minimum viable product” (MVP) mindset. Outline just enough to get started and refine based on real-world feedback.

Chasing Perfection: Obsessively tweaking your website design instead of promoting it. Aim for "good enough" and iterate later. Platforms like Netlify or Supabase make it easy to deploy quickly and improve over time.

Avoiding Delegation: Insisting on doing your bookkeeping manually despite tools like QuickBooks or Zoho making it simpler. Automate or outsource repetitive tasks, freeing up time for strategic work.

Focusing on Vanity Metrics: Prioritizing social media likes over actual sales or user engagement. Track meaningful metrics like conversion rates or customer retention.

Rewiring Your Brain: Strategies for Change

Breaking free from entrenched habits requires intentional effort and practice. Here are some steps to reprogram your thought patterns:

Replace, Don’t Erase: The brain resists a vacuum. Instead of trying to eliminate a habit, replace it with a better one. For instance, swap endless planning sessions with short, action-focused sprints.

Use Positive Triggers: Create cues that nudge you toward productive behaviors. Set a timer for 25-minute work sprints to combat procrastination.

Leverage Reflection: Regularly review your progress. Journaling or weekly check-ins can help you identify lingering bad habits and celebrate victories in breaking them.

Embrace Experimentation: Reframe side projects as experiments. This reduces the fear of failure and encourages a bias toward action. For example, instead of perfecting a pitchdeck, send it to a few contacts and iterate based on their feedback.

Old habits die hard, but with awareness and deliberate effort, you can break free from patterns that hold you back. A former neighbor and client, Sarah, dreamed of launching an online shop selling her own designed watches. Initially, she spent months perfecting her product designs without marketing or testing her ideas. Realizing this habit held her back, she committed to releasing a single design into production within a week. The response from customers provided invaluable feedback, enabling her to improve and expand her offerings. By breaking her perfectionism loop, she not only launched her business faster but also built a habit of continuous improvement. You can get a solid market research report, business plan, proposal for funding and pitch deck for your MVP here.

Recognize what habits hinder your hustle’s progress, replace them with smarter practices, and embrace a mindset of action and experimentation. Over time, these changes will become second nature, paving the way for your tiny business to thrive.