4 Habits for Marketers to Adopt

There’s no “best way” to be marketer, and many of the most successful examples had their fair share of quirks. However, there are also some common habits and tendencies shared by successful marketers. Note that the key word here is “successful.” It’s true that at some point in your career you’ll fail, perhaps several times—but what separates the eventual success stories from the “almosts” is their ability to learn from mistakes. They learn from the mistakes of themselves and others, listen to the advice that’s available, and then make a decision based on what they know, what they’ve heard, and what their gut is telling them.

Every single marketer, no matter how great they may be, can adopt habits to make their work and themselves better. You’ll never achieve perfection. That can be a tough reality for marketers to swallow since many of them have Type-A, perfectionist tendencies. The trick is getting joy out of getting better and out of learning.

Try out some of these great new habits to adopt going into the end of 2016. Who knows? By the end of Q4, these habits might take you to the next level and having you prepped to go into 2017 shining:

• Wake up earlier: This obviously doesn’t apply if you already wake up at 4:30am to get in your morning run before buckling down at your desk by 6am. However, morning people have been shown in study after study to be more successful and more productive. How early is too early? There’s certainly a point where insomnia or lack of sleep comes into play. However, if you’re waking up at 8am every day, you’re missing some great early morning hours. Aim for 5:30am, inching up 30 minutes every week depending on where you are now.

• Prioritize your health: If you’re not healthy, neither are your campaigns, work days or relationships. Prioritizing your health means more than working out on a regular basis and eating a healthy diet—although it means that, too. Putting your health first means seeing your doctors regularly for check-ups, listening to your body, and taking care of your mental/emotional/spiritual health at the same time.

• Start mono-tasking: Some marketers pride themselves on doing a bunch of projects at once, but multi-tasking isn’t getting you ahead. All of your work is suffering from it. Instead, create a triage system to tackle tasks as they come. Consciously only work on one thing at a time based on brevity of the task and/or importance. The human mind is prone to wandering, so that will always be a struggle. Meditation and focus exercises can help.

• Start your day right: How you begin each day can set the entire tone. Don’t feel rushed or chaotic when you wake up. Aim to get enough quality sleep that you wake up naturally without an alarm (which can jar you). If possible, get out of bed by rolling onto your right side, then pushing yourself up (it’s less stressful on your heart and back). Establish a healthy morning routine that works for you—consider warm lemon water instead of coffee for the first hour, establishing a skin care regimen, and avoiding electronics for at least 30 minutes after waking.