on unassuming habits
I have been reading the daily stoic by Ryan holiday. It is becoming one of those things that you read a page off every day. As a kid we had a quote calendar that was like this. I always enjoyed looking through it. It was a ritual. The quote would marinate in my mind all day. I have been doing something similar with this book. There is something comforting about it.
Today it spoke about how we accommodate habits as we grow. Habits have been a major topic in the past few years for me. But my main focus had been in developing new habits not considering the ambient ones that I picked up.
I had to think about this for a while.
After all, this is not something one considers often.
Habits like ordering wanting to eat popcorn at the movies, coffee or bubble tea while hanging with friends, or window shopping came to mind. So did some more insidious ones. Like taking food to my desk and eating as I worked. With full awareness that this led to less mindful eating and increased the likelihood that I overeat. Or my habit of hitting the snooze button, despite knowing that going back to sleep will result in less-restful sleep and morning grogginess. Some of these habits were created for a reason in a different time / context of my life. They had meaning then. But without any audit or examination, they have remained in the shadows. It was an interesting exercise. I decided to continue picking at it.
Reaching for highly processed food as a means of curing boredom.
Avoiding doing what I need to be doing by switching to an easy dopamine fix. (I notice my phone + reddit was a deadly combination for this, I have to keep them far from me while doing anything real now).
Spending a lot of time optimizing a system / activity instead of just doing it and optimizing it as the need arises. (You can correct the course incrementally, the pressure to figure out the system that you will use forever is insane. I regularly find myself falling into this trap. I will spend days, sometimes weeks, trying to come up with the most optimal way of doing something. I.e why I bought scrivener, even though it was too complex and not at all what I needed for my writing.)
Staying up too late for no reason. I know this one is a byproduct of having some insecurity around my eye issues. The unexpectedness of the corneal erosion means that I try to squeeze each minute of the day. It's better now, especially with eTRF letting me get more restful sleep. But I still find myself doing it despite knowing that waiting till my body passes out to "go sleep" is bad for health/ less restful sleep/ make me grumpy the next day. See "Revenge Sleep-Procrastination"
Impulse buying. This has become more prevalent in 2023 as I've been curbing my buying. They were never big ticket items. But I wasted money just buying stationary or books that never got used or read. Related to this are habits like just e-browsing shopping sites. I used to frequent slickdeals.net. Great deals, sure. But I often found myself buying things I had not planned on buying or needed at the moment. Yes, they were great deals. But I did not need them.
Being materialistic. Despite not wanting to be. I realized I still think a lot about whether I have a certain thing or not. There's a hungry demon in me that wants to buy everything. Now that I'm not doing it, the demon has become quite loud. Letting it die.
Going out to eat because I felt emotionally overwhelmed. This happened a lot in 2022. I thought it was justified. I -earned- this. But it was poor choices in what I ate, the amount, and the frequency. The worst part of it was that I never felt happy after eating it either. Always with a tinge of regret. Now my wife and I go for a weekly date night, which silences this little hungry beast and I always leave feeling happy - because I'm spending it with my favourite person. The early time restricted fasting has helped too. Because I go through most of the day feeling sated and don't have the incessant nagging to want to order food.
Letting people make decisions for me. I thought about this one pretty hard, I would be so passive in the name of being "nice" that decisions were made by others. And despite it bothering me, I never spoke out. I let this continue far longer than it should. In romantic-relationships I never asked for what I needed (no wonder I would be terrified of committing). In family relations I let everyone use me and never complained because I was "the nice family member" - no wonder I dreaded spending time with them.
Not putting objects away from where I got them after finishing using them. This one irritates me and yet I do it! My desk (which I organize every week) turns into a pigsty by the end of the week. It is a cycle that I was unaware I could...just break.
Probably a lot more. I'll do a second list-list with more of them.
Today it spoke about how we accommodate habits as we grow. Habits have been a major topic in the past few years for me. But my main focus had been in developing new habits not considering the ambient ones that I picked up.
I had to think about this for a while.
After all, this is not something one considers often.
Habits like ordering wanting to eat popcorn at the movies, coffee or bubble tea while hanging with friends, or window shopping came to mind. So did some more insidious ones. Like taking food to my desk and eating as I worked. With full awareness that this led to less mindful eating and increased the likelihood that I overeat. Or my habit of hitting the snooze button, despite knowing that going back to sleep will result in less-restful sleep and morning grogginess. Some of these habits were created for a reason in a different time / context of my life. They had meaning then. But without any audit or examination, they have remained in the shadows. It was an interesting exercise. I decided to continue picking at it.
Reaching for highly processed food as a means of curing boredom.
Avoiding doing what I need to be doing by switching to an easy dopamine fix. (I notice my phone + reddit was a deadly combination for this, I have to keep them far from me while doing anything real now).
Spending a lot of time optimizing a system / activity instead of just doing it and optimizing it as the need arises. (You can correct the course incrementally, the pressure to figure out the system that you will use forever is insane. I regularly find myself falling into this trap. I will spend days, sometimes weeks, trying to come up with the most optimal way of doing something. I.e why I bought scrivener, even though it was too complex and not at all what I needed for my writing.)
Staying up too late for no reason. I know this one is a byproduct of having some insecurity around my eye issues. The unexpectedness of the corneal erosion means that I try to squeeze each minute of the day. It's better now, especially with eTRF letting me get more restful sleep. But I still find myself doing it despite knowing that waiting till my body passes out to "go sleep" is bad for health/ less restful sleep/ make me grumpy the next day. See "Revenge Sleep-Procrastination"
Impulse buying. This has become more prevalent in 2023 as I've been curbing my buying. They were never big ticket items. But I wasted money just buying stationary or books that never got used or read. Related to this are habits like just e-browsing shopping sites. I used to frequent slickdeals.net. Great deals, sure. But I often found myself buying things I had not planned on buying or needed at the moment. Yes, they were great deals. But I did not need them.
Being materialistic. Despite not wanting to be. I realized I still think a lot about whether I have a certain thing or not. There's a hungry demon in me that wants to buy everything. Now that I'm not doing it, the demon has become quite loud. Letting it die.
Going out to eat because I felt emotionally overwhelmed. This happened a lot in 2022. I thought it was justified. I -earned- this. But it was poor choices in what I ate, the amount, and the frequency. The worst part of it was that I never felt happy after eating it either. Always with a tinge of regret. Now my wife and I go for a weekly date night, which silences this little hungry beast and I always leave feeling happy - because I'm spending it with my favourite person. The early time restricted fasting has helped too. Because I go through most of the day feeling sated and don't have the incessant nagging to want to order food.
Letting people make decisions for me. I thought about this one pretty hard, I would be so passive in the name of being "nice" that decisions were made by others. And despite it bothering me, I never spoke out. I let this continue far longer than it should. In romantic-relationships I never asked for what I needed (no wonder I would be terrified of committing). In family relations I let everyone use me and never complained because I was "the nice family member" - no wonder I dreaded spending time with them.
Not putting objects away from where I got them after finishing using them. This one irritates me and yet I do it! My desk (which I organize every week) turns into a pigsty by the end of the week. It is a cycle that I was unaware I could...just break.
Probably a lot more. I'll do a second list-list with more of them.