Habits: The Inconvenience of Convenience

I had thought about the majority of this post a good few years ago but never got around to writing it for some reason. It's not because I didn't think it was good, it's just that I either didn't have the time to write it, or figured there were better things to do.

See, we all have habits. Some habits make us procrastinate or put things off in order to do something easier or something that entertains us.

But here's the clincher: if, out of habit, you are unable to perform a certain action you are accustomed to in its normal location, method or practice, you have to temporarily adjust that action.

For example, most men use the same stall/urinal and sink in a public restroom that they frequently visit. I don't know why, but they just do. I'm one of those guys, so I speak from experience.

Now, in my example, the sight of any type of debris on a stall, toilet seat or urinal causes immediate gasps and quite a large feeling of discomfort. Just a single, short, curly pubic hair on a toilet seat makes me decide I cannot use my favorite stall.

Now, instead of mustering the courage to take a piece of toilet paper and wiping it away, flushing it, then lining the toilet seat with toilet paper and proceed, I change my stall preference.

The next time I need to use that bathroom, I'll go to the stall I used last, which was the replacement for the previous favored stall.

Obviously I'm a nutcase, so I'm not suggesting most guys do what I do, but the same concept applies to anything. From parking spaces to checkout aisles in a supermarket, us humans prefer to stay in a comfort zone; comfort zones created by, you guessed it, habits.

If habits are to add a sense of convenience to our day-to-day lives, wouldn't it make them inconvenient to constantly change them based on our surroundings?

There's this common saying that it takes 22 days to develop a habit and only 2 days to break it. However, in trivial scenarios like this, it can be instant.

One pubic hair, one person parked in your normal parking spot, a checkout aisle closed when you go to the store... one change, and people tend to stick with that change until they have to switch it up again.

Convenient?