I love talking about habits, but in many cases, the habit is less important than the goal it seeks to move us towards. I ramble on this idea for a 1200 words.
I’ve been enjoying the work of psychologist and author Donald Robertson. One of his recent articles, How to Mentally Rehearse Coping, helped clarify an important idea for me.
Admittedly, it is an idea I am only now coming to understand properly, which is a little embarrassing, because it feels rather obvious once you see it.
But let’s leave my stupidity aside for the time being.
The basic idea is this: there is a difference between a habit (a healthy or productive one) and the larger purpose that habit serves.
The clearest illustration for me comes from contemplating death. Yes, apologies for the early-week bummer.
Let’s assume that, before I die, I have an opportunity to reflect on the life I’ve led. I don’t imagine my individual habits will be the main focus. I probably won’t spend much time thinking about the fibre I ate, the weights sessions I completed, the minutes I meditated or the productivity tools I used. I’d be reflecting (hopefully) on what those habits enabled. Did they help me remain healthy and capable of engaging with the world? Did they help me do good work, support people I cared about, contribute something useful or make the world a little better?
This applies whether we’re talking about habits that support a healthy body, such as exercise; a healthy mind, such as meditation; or our ability to work and learn, such as keeping a learning journal.
It also applies to study habits.
How you organise your time, remember information, take notes, prepare for exams and write assignments all matter. But those habits matter primarily because of what they make possible.
Ideally, they help you engage more deeply with the topics you’re studying. They help you feel part of a discipline, gain knowledge and develop some mastery of a field. In time, that learning can expand the kinds of work you can do and the ways you might contribute to the world.
Good study habits = a more exciting life and career (well I can’t really guarantee that, but it’s more likely than not).
Now admittedly, that is easy for me to say from my vantage point 20 years after studying. I can guarantee that when I was studying, I wasn’t thinking much about that bigger picture. I was laser-focused on what was due, when it was due and whether I could get it done.
But part of the job of teaching is sharing insights gained from experience. I can say that years after completing my degree, I don’t remember the details of my study practices. I don’t remember which particular system I used to organise my assignments or exactly how I prepared for each exam. What I carry with me is the sense that I became part of something. I completed a degree. I gained knowledge in psychology. I gradually developed the capacity to work effectively in that field.
The study activities were important, but largely in an instrumental way. Their value came from what they gave me access to.
That doesn’t mean you should ignore study habits or stop trying to improve how you learn. But it does mean you probably don’t need to become overly attached to finding the perfect system.
A better question might be: Is the system I have helping me move meaningfully into the field I’ve chosen?
Is it helping me learn? Is it helping me become more capable? Is it helping me engage with ideas, people and possibilities that matter to me?
Yeah, so what is your point Gareth?
Good question.
My point is that I seem to have forgotten that insight of late.
Working in a health discipline, it has been easy for me to become similarly laser-focused on health habits themselves: what they are, why they work and how to establish them. And in the context of communicating and teaching those, I guess that makes sense. The better I know them the more effective I might be in helping others develop them.
What I perhaps haven’t communicated as well (or perhaps lost sight of altogether) is that the habit often isn’t the goal.
Meditation isn’t necessarily the goal. It is practice for becoming more present in your actual life.
Eating broccoli isn’t the goal. The health benefits of eating vegetables help support a body capable of participating in more of what life offers.
Journalling isn’t the goal. Ideally, some of the things you learn about yourself make their way from the page into your relationships, your work and the decisions you make.
Robertson describes a related distinction between skills acquisition and skills application. We can spend years learning psychological skills (meditating, journalling, reflecting and consuming self-help content) without using those skills in the situations where they matter most. He calls this the problem of “compartmentalising” skills: leaving what we’ve learned on the meditation cushion, in the journal or in the therapy room rather than carrying it into everyday life.
Avoidance may be one reason this happens.
It is possible to disappear quite deeply into healthy habits because they feel safer and more controllable than the parts of life that frighten us. Refining the morning routine can be easier than having the difficult conversation. Reading another book can be easier than testing what we’ve learned. Recording another insight in a journal can be easier than acting on it.
Even building the perfect study system can become a way of avoiding the discomfort of actually engaging with difficult material and feeling like a newbie.
Here is a slightly uncomfortable question: what scares you about study?
Then ask yourself whether your habits are helping you confront those fears, or helping you avoid them.
I know some of the things I avoid because they scare or worry me. And I know what it is like to keep searching for another psychological, physical or productivity habit than to use what I have already learned to confront those fears.
Perhaps, then, the next important step in my self-care isn’t another habit.
Perhaps it is recognising that I’ve learned quite a lot from the habits I already have and asking how I can use that learning to take on some of the things that really freak me out.
This isn’t permission to give up living healthily, studying effectively or developing useful routines. Those habits still matter. They build skills and capacities. They can help us become more capable, autonomous, connected and engaged. They give us access to experiences and opportunities that might not otherwise be available.
But it is an invitation to avoid attaching more value to the habit than it needs to carry.
Instead, we might ask:
What is this habit preparing me for?
What is it giving me access to?
Am I carrying what I learn from it into the moments that matter?
Is my system helping me move towards the parts of life I’m likely to remember as meaningful?
Because ideally, our habits help us shape a life we can eventually reflect on positively.
So we don’t arrive at the end wondering: Why the hell did I bother eating all that broccoli?
PS – I would like to be quite clear that I do enjoy broccoli. I live a Pro-Broccoli life.