Want to Break Bad Habits and Supercharge Your Business? Use This Technique. Forget about breaking your bad habits. Automate your busy work and focus on growing your business instead.

Homer understood the power of habits. In his epic poem, The Odyssey, the Sirens are half-woman, half-bird creatures whose hypnotic voices lure sailors into deadly coastlines. Ignore the misogyny in this ancient Greek tale, and the Sirens represent temptation; the magnetic pull of things we should probably resist. I'm not a classical scholar, but habits feel like the siren song of modern life.

As a CEO, I've also noticed that entrepreneurs often underestimate how habits influence our businesses. Unless we're talking clichéd green juice and cold plunge routines, we think our changeable workdays give us a free pass in the world of habits. Yet, research shows about 40% of our daily activities are habitual. That includes founders, too.

I spent the past year writing a book about automation, not habits. But as I considered how my team and I use software to minimize repetitive, manual tasks, I began to see that both habits and automation are built on loops. There's a trigger, an action and an outcome that occur whether we're conscious of them or not. As author Gretchen Rubin says, "Habits are the invisible architecture of daily life." I believe automation is the silent fuel of successful businesses.