"The despotism of custom is everywhere standing up to human advancement." - John Stuart Mill
So a few things before I get started. First I don't remember where I got this quote from but I saw it, thought it was good and wrote it down. Also I don't know who John Stuart Mill is but I feel like I should (I would guess something to do with the American Revolution), so if you know help a brother out.
Now that I got that out of the way, I find this to be right on the nose. How many times have you found yourself grabbing for a snack simply because it's snack time? Or have you gone out for drinks just because the rest of the team was going? The list can go on and on.
Customs make life easy. Customs eliminate the need to think. Customs are/have triggers. It's 3pm, 3pm is snack time, grab a snack. What you weren't hungry? Too late, you already ate the snack.
Without customs we would have to sit and think about the pros & cons of every decision that we are making. Customs save us time and energy that could be used at more important times.
For the most part this is a good thing. Until it's not. When you're trying to lose weight 3pm snack time becomes the enemy everyday. It's an enemy that you either have to fight or avoid. In this case avoiding it might mean making it so you can't eat snack; can you move that meeting to 3pm? Fighting it could be being prepared with a "healthy" snack instead of going to the vending machine.
In the case of the bad customs the first step to changing them is recognizing them in the first place. That's the thing about customs though, they're hard to pick out. Remember the point of a custom is to not have to think about them, they're automatic.
So how do we change the bad customs? The first step is you have to take account of your day. This means you have to be able to say what you did during each hour of every day. Give yourself a week to track everything you do throughout each day. After a week you'll start to notice patterns of both good and bad customs.
The next step is to look for the triggers. We already talked about 3pm being the snack trigger but there are other types of triggers. Triggers can be people like that annoying co-worker or situations like happy hour just because it's Friday. Figuring out your triggers will allow you to plan round them.
This leads us to the last step. The last step is used the info you gather from accounting for the week and finding the triggers to make a plan. Your plan should take into account all of the triggers, good and bad, and the flow of your typical day. Try to replace bad triggers with good ones and figure out ways to actively either fight or avoid those bad customs.
Give this a shot. What customs, good or bad, do you notice in your own life. What are you going to do increase the good and decrease the bad?
