Since I seem to be on a roll writing about habits, I figured I'd mention another one: taking notes during meetings.
Over the last five years of my tech career, I got really good at this. It started when I used to volunteer as a scribe during industry standardization meetings at the IETF, wherein I would jot down the main discussion points and action items so that the working group chairs could provide a session summary to the conference proceedings. Over time, I started doing the same thing in my day job - especially at Mozilla, where I had a huge number of meetings with partners and it became difficult to keep track of it all.
Initially I did this in paper notebooks, but that method had a few major downsides. First, the resulting notes weren't searchable. Second, I can type way faster than I can write. My solution was to keep all my notes in text files on my computer, which I could search through using the `grep` utility at the Unix command line. (Yes, I'm a geek - more normal folks might use a dedicated note-taking app.) For each meeting, I would create a separate file named `partner-yyyy-mm-dd.txt`, thus making it easy to see the entire history of interactions. For each meeting, I would list the participants, write up major discussion points and decisions, list action items (prefaced by "TODO" for improved searchability). If I had time, I would quickly review and correct the notes after the meeting; if I had back-to-back meetings, as was often the case, I would try to do this at the end of the day while my memories were still fresh.
For our most important partners, we kept notes in shared documents, which was good for transparency and collaborative note-taking but more distracting for me because I find it convenient to type in a small terminal window tucked away in the bottom right corner of the screen while most of the screen is devoted to the video conferencing app where the meeting takes place.
Speaking of distracting, you might wonder: doesn't it annoy other participants if I'm typing away during a meeting? I'm a fairly noisy typist, but I've learned to type more quietly and I also mute myself when not speaking (here it helps to have a corded headset with a physical mute button).
Taking notes in this way really helped me to stay organized, follow through on my commitments, and communicate more effectively. If you give it a try, let me know how it goes.
(Cross-posted at philosopher.coach.)