Habits and routines can work wonders for productivity. Once a task has become a regular habit, you’ll stop dreading it and accept it as a part of your daily routine. For example, you might dread your first few visits to the gym, but once you’re in the habit of going 3 times a week, you stop dreading and just get on with it.

Of course, forming habits is easier said than done, but there are things you can do to turn recurring tasks into mental habits.

Many habits are “triggered” by specific actions or senses. A bit like Pavlov conditioned his dogs to salivate on command, you can condition yourself to have (productive) responses to certain stimuli…

You probably already have trigger actions in your daily routine. Perhaps the end of your favourite TV show triggers you to do the washing up, or arriving home from work triggers you to pick up your gym bag and head back out again.

It’s not too late to start creating new triggers to help you get more done.

To follow this workplace hack, you first need to identify what you want to get done and then identify a habit that you can use as a trigger. You then need to make sure that you always follow the trigger with the task that you want to become a habit.

For example, you might use coffee as your trigger to sort through your email. Every morning, you could make yourself a coffee and then get stuck into your email. It won’t be quick, but after a while, you should begin to find that making your coffee gets you into the mindset to sort through your email.

Do you have a productivity trigger? Tell us about it in the comments!

This hack is part of a series of weekly workplace hacks that teaches you about collaboration, productivity and time saving tips. Published every Wednesday.

Photo Credit: Håkan Dahlström via Compfight cc