You’re nothing more than a mass of habits

You’re nothing more than a mass of habits(blog.willjennings.net)

30 points by mainevent 13 years ago | 17 comments

tessellated 13 years ago |

Vimes is described in Pratchett's Guards! Guards! as a "skinny, unshaven collection of bad habits marinated in alcohol".

hugofierro 13 years ago |

“Watch your thoughts, for they will become actions. Watch your actions, for they'll become... habits. Watch your habits for they will forge your character. Watch your character, for it will make your destiny.” Margaret Thatcher

darwinGod 13 years ago | |

Buddha had summarized that very succinctly "What we think, we become " :-)

stephengillie 13 years ago | | |

"You'll go where you're looking. Don't look down or you'll fall over."

Motorcycle training

pfortuny 13 years ago |

You've just discovered this? Honestly, Aristotle's ethics is all about habits: keeping and nurturing 'good' habits (virtues) and preventing 'bad' ones (vices)...

So... welcome to maturity.

gagan2020 13 years ago | |

You are right, I think he is carried away by his experinces. Actually, Book 'The power of Habit' (which I am also reading) is more about how habit forms and how to change/replace any Habit (from bad to good), whether it is Individual, Organization or Society. It is 'how' that is important here.

For Individual part, I am planning to launch an app for addicts so that they could also get benefit from same principles. I believe in that cue, routine, reward cycle. But, For creating app I need to do my own research for individual cases.

kiba 13 years ago |

I also discovered that forming habits doesn't mean it takes 21 days or 30 days or whatever nice round number people like to trout. To me, by 21 days to 30 days, something I am trying to make a habit is well on its way to becoming a habit.

I managed to add a bunch of habits such as doing math at khanacademy, writing 500 words a day, measuring data points on my body such as blood sugar, weight, steps, sleeping time, pulse rate, and blood pressure.

creatrixcordis 13 years ago |

nice post BUT: i brush my teeth because i want to keep them clean, minus the tingly feelings since my tooth paste doesn't have the chemicals, and according to your technique, you are reducing us to this reward model which actually is detrimental to our psychological progress as human beings, i don't need a cue to depend on when i want to do something, i know what i want to do and i go do it, using your technique you are perpetuating distrust in our own minds and un-confidence in our thinking process by relying on placing cues in our immediate environment to trick us into doing things, i sense a habit of distrust of our abilities coming on and slithering through our psyches, you want to make people feel confident about their decision processes not insecure about relying on external cues, i mean i tend to think we are slightly more advanced than lab rats, but then again that is why advertising is so successfull, because we really do operate on this reward model and most of us don't know what we need or want and think some third party might

jakejake 13 years ago | |

I agree the tooth brushing example was detrimental to the point of the post.

You could also say, I put on my underwear after drying off merely out of habit and the underwear cartels make their cottony underwear so smooth merely to provide a pleasant reward for my ass cheeks. But, in fact I put on my underwear for a variety of practical reasons and the smoothness is not really a reward.

The snack break example was more to the point. That's a voluntary thing that becomes routine, but could be skipped with no social repercussions.

tomrod 13 years ago |

I'm not sure "mass" is the appropriate collective term for habits. Perhaps "collection" serves better here.

I'm more than my habits, Aristotle aside. I'm an economist and a programmer and a father. The last causes disruptive change to habits more often than not.

zerostar07 13 years ago |

A mass of habits and addictions, so behavioristically pessimistic yet quite true. I think a more useful question would be: what habits should you acquire?

dsirijus 13 years ago |

No, I'm not.

pyrotechnick 13 years ago |

You're especially nothing more than a mass of habits if one of those habits happens to be attempting to render all life nothing more than a mass of habits.

alexknowshtml 13 years ago | |

You're actually a big sack of chemicals, mostly water. It's actually remarkable that those chemicals manage to form such complex and remarkable things as habits.

pyrotechnick 13 years ago | | |

You've been sold a lie.

There's a reason it's called Gene EXPRESSION.

tomrod 13 years ago | |

Hah! Reminds me: it's turtles all the way down, and chances are one of them is a teenage ninja.

pyrotechnick 13 years ago | | |

Teenage ninja turtles are nothing more than a mass of teenage, ninja and turtle habits.