Make It a Habit

I am fascinated by little things. My wife and I enjoy travel by car and whenever we are on the road more than an hour, one of us will start in wondering why we do things the way we do. Habits interest me. Not the traditional uniform of the Nun—that's a different interest. I am interested in how we learn to do things, why we keep doing them, and of course in how difficult it is to stop doing them, once you have started.

It's been said if you do something two-dozen times, it can become a habit. Others say it has to do with a number of times over number of days equation. If you have a can of Mountain Dew per day, every day, you may develop a habit, a behavior gives you the continued regular consumption of Mountain Dew without your having to remind yourself to do it all of the time. In fact, you will do it without any attention at all. This is especially true if you can somehow ritualize something. Have that Mountain Dew every morning when you first come in and turn on the lights.

So a month down the road, you come in to work, turn on the lights, sit down to start tearing through your day and you will reach almost automatically for that can of Mountain Dew. And at some point, if you reach out and it's not there, it can seriously mess up the rhythm of your day.

For some reason, it is universally recognized that it is much easier to begin a Bad Habit, like smoking, overeating or surfing the Internet, than it is to begin a Good Habit, like exercising or spell checking a document when you think you're done. And it's awful, trying to break a habit of any kind, once it's engrained in your daily ritual.

And so we keep doing things long after they are actually good for us. This is what I did, today. This is what I did yesterday. This is what I did last week. A friend once mentioned she was doing X "because of all of that inflation" with an appropriate Yucky Face expression. But this was in 1998, during a time when inflation wasn't a problem. But it was easier for her to continue the behaviors she had learned in the 1980s than to learn and adopt new behaviors as things changed.

I read. I mean, I read a lot. I got interested in reading about money about a week after I learned that I didn't know anything about money. But I always get two or three sources. So at any given time, I have two or three computer magazines coming to my house. I have two or three guitar magazines, now. It's rare that I get a single Web technology book on a subject. I have quite a collection of HTML books, CSS books, MySQL books, PHP books, JavaScript books, Design books and so on. I have only JQuery book, so far.

I need to make a change to a Web page. I fire up Dreamweaver. Why? Because that's how I edit Web pages. It's what I have used since about 2001 when I gave up HomeSite. And every couple of years I have upgraded, because, well, that's becoming a habit now, too. But should I upgrade to the next version? Should I be doing pages in Dreamweaver at all, now?

It's interesting, sometimes, to challenge yourself like this. Why do we do the things we do? Are there other, better alternatives? Beyond "comfort" is there some benefit to doing things the way we have "always" done them? I was impressed by Dreamweaver, when I finally stepped away from HomeSite. What am I missing out on, now, by continuing to use Dreamweaver to build pages? And how will it take me to break my Dreamweaver habit, now that it is so engrained?

Starting in September, I have taken to climbing the stairs of The Link, here at work, at least once per day. When I have been gone a day, I make it up. I have now done this quite a few times. Have I made it a habit? No, not yet. I know it's good for me and all of that, but I still have to force myself.

Habits are funny things.