Derek Kędziora, Defaults instead of Habits Earlier today I’ve read this blogpost by Derek Kędziora.
He talks about how habits in the “self help scene” In this post Derek thinks through how the stereotypical conception in the self-help scene is unproductive towards having success with them. He mentions that if you go with the “traditional” view on habits then that makes you end up to fear failing the streak a single time leading you to never do it again. Because you have broken it.
He instead proposes looking at habits and perceiving them as defaults instead. That way you can break them occasionally as it’s realistic, but you don’t fear to have broken a streak and instead you go naturally back to how the default.
He mentions a few examples himself but I have another few out of my own life that apply here.
default 1, coffee
Not drinking coffee. For a long time I was worried about how much coffee would influence me and that mainly in the aspects of 1. not being able to sleep, 2. getting more nervous and 3. it amplifying bad emotions when you’re out of energy, leading to anxiety like states. Then in Oktober last year I’ve stopped drinking coffee and didn’t do for six months. But after those six months I was in a foreign country and people drank coffee in all social gatherings. I took care then to not drink coffee after a certain time to make it not influence my sleep, but I did not have to worry about not drinking coffee when back home because I was not trying to keep a streak, instead I went back to the default.
default 2, studying / working
When working or studying (as a student) you could try to keep a streak of working and studying every day. But there are days on which you should rest instead. Contrarily of trying to make a habit out of studying every day you can declare it your default and not work e.g. every Sunday, knowing you’ll go back to the default as soon as the next day starts. Without fearing the one exception will make you lazy.
conclusion
The post resonated with me. When I was younger I read “Atomic Habits” too often and “The Power of Habit”. I did enjoy what they preached but the approach is in many circumstances not a realistic one that can be kept. And in many circumstances it is counterproductive to try to keep a habit when it makes you end up discarding the action as a whole as soon as you fail after an longer streak.
I encourage testing this paradigm to see if that works out for you.