Do you ever pick up your mobile device and realize there’s no reason for doing so?
The phone didn’t ping with a notification; no emails to read; no burning desire to scroll through social; …just the instinctual, habitual, reaching for the thing and realizing, “Wait, why am I looking at this thing?”
Is there a word for that?
Anyways, I’ve been meditating more and becoming aware of these moments.
The term is "habit" - powerful, fascinating and ... programmable. Great book on that: "The Power of Habits" by Charles Duhigg
Nice. In the queue.
Still enjoying Lyn’s book (and Aurelius, and Vonnegut at the moment), but am definitely in a phase where I want to re-examine my habits.
However, I think what I’m describing is more than just a “habit,” which I would define as a natural action that’s performed without thinking and which may or may not be useful, but which satisfies some urge.
Checking one’s mobile device is very UNnatural and while it similarly may or may not be useful, the only thing it satisfies is the tension it, itself, created.
So, when I reach for this thing and realize I don’t actually have a reason for doing so, there’s some real sense that something has gone awry. “Why did I pick up this tool if I don’t have a current use for it?!” It would be like picking up a wrench and realizing I don’t have any bolts to tighten. That’s the feeling I’m trying to describe and which I don’t yet think has a word.
You seem to be in the same mode of renovating your routines and probing habits with conciousnes.
Not sure, if I would call habits "natural". What is that, anyways? Is a nuclear power plant natural? It's easy to argue for either side.. Habits are a function of the brain, a subroutine implemented to reduce energy consumption and accelerate execution. They do satisfy an urge, but that urge can be pure fiction of the brain and the reward as well. There's usually a trigger, that causes the execution of the habit - and finally some reward. First step is to put conciousnes on the habit (e.g. random looks at phone screen) to make it visible, then analyze what triggers it and what's the reward (dopamin? Superficial feeling of ingesting information ?). It's very hard to suppress execution of an old habit -modification is easier. You can overwrite the habit by inventing a new one for the same trigger.
I did that for stopping smoking - when I felt theburge, I took some deep breaths instead of a cigarette. That felt refreshing (reward) and helped overwriteling the habit with a new routine and a new reward.
Rewriting is highly concious. Once written, it falls back to automatic execution - a new habit.
Does that male sense to you?
