If any of you have read Charles Duhigg’s 2012 book The Power of Habit, much of what I am writing about today will feel familiar. Do read on even if you’re familiar with the book, because there are lessons gleaned from that book that are relevant to fundraising – even if they don’t seem applicable at first.

What do we think about when we hear the word habit? A dichotomy comes to mind. There are good habits (washing out your recyclables, packing a lunch, flossing) and there are bad habits (watching TV in bed, biting your nails, littering).

But why do we have habits at all? What purpose do they serve? According to Duhigg’s research, habits serve an important evolutionary purpose – they create neuro-efficiency. That is to say, that when you are engaged in a habitual behaviour, your brain can effectively take a load off. The actions that constitute that habit are so second nature that your brain doesn’t need to be actively involved in the process. Whether the habit is “good” or “bad”, muscle memory takes over, and your mental space is freed up for other things, or conserved for later when you may need to be hyper-focused and attentive.

So how does this process of neuro-efficiency overlap with fundraising? Unless you are a very lucky person, there are probably some tasks on your daily, weekly, monthly to do lists that you struggle to get through. You just don’t like doing them. For some of you that might be updating your donor database every day, for others it may be writing thank-you notes to new subscribers to your monthly giving program. For still others, it may be cleaning up your email subscription list. Whatever the dreaded task is, the more you resist it, the less likely it is to become routine, and the more insurmountable an obstacle it can become.

The more unwilling you are to work those dreaded tasks into your habitual day-to-day actions, the more effort it requires. For me, the thought of the things I don’t like to do taking up more than their fair share of intellectual energy makes me want to scream.

For me, it’s phone calls. Ugh. The phone. Just the thought of listening to the ringtone sends a shiver down my spine. Like flossing, or rinsing out cans before tossing them into the blue bin, I don’t gain any pleasure from the task. However, I do know that it will yield better outcomes not just for me, but for the organization I work for, and the donor who has made the gift. Because of that, I have made sure to create a habit around phone calls. Making it a habit takes some of the sting out of the task.

I mentioned earlier that habits allow your mind to rest, to conserve energy. But what is now a habit (your route home from the office, for example) wasn’t always effortless. Establishing a new habit requires focused mindfulness and intentionality. Luckily it only requires that intense focus for a short time. Then, it becomes second nature. You can tune out the particularities and let your muscle memory and well-worn neural pathways do the work for you.

For example, on your first day at a new job, you probably studied your commute route. You looked at how long it would take you on transit, on your bike or by car. You made hundreds of small, but intentional decisions to establish your daily commute to and from work. Over the course of weeks (three to be precise – research demonstrates that 21 days is all it takes for a new habit to form), you settled into that routine and found that you could get to and from work without really paying attention to your actions at all. In fact, your routine was so well-established that you were freed up to make mental to do lists, take in an audiobook or catch up with a friend over the phone.

It was an effort for me to incorporate daily phone calls to donors into my routine. But once I did so, I established a pattern of action that I can now more easily slip into. Mindfulness was critical, but so too was creating strong cues and a strong reward to book end the phone call.

In my early career as a fundraiser, I was in charge of a membership of several thousand. Each had made a gift to the organization of some size or another. Some members were monthly donors, others were sporadic givers responding to some drives, while ignoring others. One spring, we received news that a major donor was willing to contribute $100,000 as part of a matching campaign. We had just 4 weeks to raise that matching amount from our stakeholders. It was a daunting challenge. With a list of 400 names, selected for their giving patterns and capacity to give, I made myself a coffee, and sat down next to the phone with a dramatic sigh and dialed the first number.

No one answered. Phew.

I dialed the next number. An elderly gentleman in Baltimore picked up and we talked for almost an hour about how democracy had changed over the course of his activist life. He increased his monthly gift by $10. I hung up and felt wildly energized by my success. Drawn along on that momentum, I picked up the phone and dialed again. This time a surly gentleman gave me a laundry list of complaints about our work, canceled his pledge and asked me to take him off our mailing list. Utter fail. I got up and stretched, I walked around the block and poked my head into a couple of nearby shops. The next few mornings were much the same.

Without knowing it, I had begun to establish a pattern of cue → action → reward. The cue was the cup of coffee. That sensory experience of the smell, taste and heat of the coffee created the impulse to get me into the calling frame of mind. When the call went well, it was the reward that reinforced the habit of calling. When it went badly, I created my own reward, a five minute stroll around the neighbourhood. Once I sat back down, I filled up my coffee and the habit loop continued.

Let me be clear, donor phone calls are still not my favorite part of the job, but thanks to intentionally creating a habit loop, and reinforcing that loop every time (always with coffee, always with the reward of a wander in the nearby shops), I can skip over the procrastination and resistance and get through the task with much less effort.

So here’s your challenge. Zero in on the task that you least like. Analyze your behaviour around that task. Maybe when you sit down to update the database, your procrastinate by scrolling through Twitter, or organizing your sock drawer. Instead, I want you to create a sensory cue to start you on that task. Essential oils are great for this. Set a timer for 25 minutes and put your head down and get the task done. Then, a reward. 10 minutes of sock drawer time, or tweeting, or a couple of yoga stretches. Wash, rinse, repeat for 21 days. Before you know it, you won’t even necessarily need the cue or the rewards because the habit will be established. When you feel yourself getting back into the procrastination loop, break out the cues and rewards again to get you back on track.

In no time it’ll be as easy as 1, 2, 3.

Aine McGlynn is the Chief Operating Officer at The Good Partnership. The Good Partnership helps small charities and nonprofits evolve their fundraising in a way that feels good. We do everything from strategy and planning to hands-on implementation. We focus on fundraising so you can focus on changing the world. Download your free fundraising template today!