Old Habits Die Hard

The results are in!

Nobody likes my hyperfocus series!
Least of all, me!

You know that dad who finds their kid smoking, so dad forces the kid to smoke a whole carton of cigarettes all at once so he never wants to do it ever again? I was like the kid and the dad simultaneously in this scenario. Actually I think it kinda worked because I no longer find myself compulsively playing that damn game lately. Drastic times call for drastic measures.

In any case I'll probably complete that series eventually (or not), but nobody cares anyway so there is that. But that was then, and this is now, and the topic of todays post is habits and routine.

Having a routine can be a very good thing.

It can keep one on-track, focused, and less likely to spiral into a volatile or unhealthy state. I remember last year when I quit my Amazon job this exact kind of scenario popped up. This was actually a good job for me to have, and I wasn't too keen on quitting. Not because the pay was good or because I saw myself starting a career working for Bezos, but because the routine of it all kept me on a nice track that prevented me from doing stupid shit like playing video games until the sun came up while chain-smoking blunts and consuming 500% of my daily salt from a packet of frozen taquitos.

Why are my feet swelling up so badly?

True story, bro

Just kidding I'm not cool enough to roll and smoke blunts.

Momentum: Objects in motion tend to stay in motion.

But then there is another side to the story of routine and habits. It's not all sunshine and rainbows. It doesn't matter if the habit is good or bad, we have a tendency to keep doing it. In fact 'good' and 'bad' are highly subjective so something that could have been 'good' at one point becomes 'bad' and it's still just as hard to kick the habit as anything else.

Most recently this has been happening with self upvoting my posts. Every time I publish a post I immediately proceed to upvote it and then remember, "oh yeah I'm not doing that anymore". It's not good or bad, it just is. It's all very Pavlov. Our brains start associating certain things with the routine we've been doing and automatically carry out the old habit by instinct.

_{Salivating to a bell is neither good nor bad.}

Circadian Rhythm

Human evolution has been going on for hundreds of thousands of years. Remind me again... how long ago was the lightbulb invented? How long ago was the industrial revolution? From this perspective, technology has really thrown human evolution into a tailspin. Half of the population is allergic to dairy products. Makes sense right? You're drinking milk from the tit of a cow that was meant for cow babies. Cows have four stomachs for god sake. Stupid humans.

But the real question is...

Should we dial it back and revert back to our old programming, or should we force an evolution?
In many instances, there is no choice.
When the environment changes, we have to change with it.
And humans have changed their environment more than any other living thing on the planet.

Unnatural light.

This is a huge one. Humans were meant to go to sleep when it gets dark and wake up when it gets light. High frequency light (waves of blue/purple and above) have an actual affect on our our brain works. I have to wear blue-blocker glasses at night when I drive or look at a monitor or phone. If I don't I'll be wired for hours and unable to sleep. Yeah they make me look like an idiot but they're totally worth the price ($15).

Speaking of light, these new cars with their fancy new LED headlights are complete bullshit. The extra blue light that modern cars put out these days is even more blinding than when I was a kid. And I remember when I was a kid and actually had great vision that even the dull yellow lights were blinding. These days if I forget my blue-blockers when night driving these new LED headlights can fatigue me so badly and I feel tired even when I'm not tired and I can't keep my eyes open. Then I pull off the road and the feeling immediately goes away. These car manufacturers never even got permission to use this tech but here we are. The light pollution is real. It is what it is; deal with it.

What about psychologically?

We can apply this logic to all walks of life. What about finance and investing? How many of us have a bad habit of getting greedy during the bull market and fearful during the bear? How many buy high and sell low into the stronger hands? The statistics prove that it's more than half. It sounds like such a basic and easy thing to do: buy low and sell high, but it's not. There's way more to it than some played out cliché motto.

Exploring the financial side even more, we see that a huge amount of people compulsively spend all their money and can't even afford a $1000 emergency expense, no matter how much money they are making. Not only that, but capitalism in general actually promotes and celebrates what is now essentially a societal standard. Consume. Consume. Consumer! But don't worry, when something goes wrong all the billionaires of the world will hop on their private jets to meet up and figure out what the plebs are doing wrong, and what they need to sacrifice to fix the problem. Make no mistake.

Some people need a crutch.

Like in my girlfriend's case, she spends all her liquid assets and often needs me to pick up the tab right before payday, but also a huge portion of her paycheck goes straight into the retirement/investment fund automatically. We still have no idea how much crypto she owns. I bet it's more than me... she refuses to check because it's "stressful". Ignorance is bliss, amirite? How many of us check the markets right when we wake up in the morning? I used to do it all the time.

Circling back to my own blog...

This is basically my job now. If I'm being honest, perhaps one that I should take more seriously. In any case, the routine of writing a post and staying consistent all plays into this idea of routine, be it good or bad. I mean obviously being consistent on posting is definitively 'good' most of the time but I'm sure there are examples to the contrary... like shit posting a bunch, getting downvoted, and then tilting out and making the situation worse. Couldn't be me.

The symptom of a problem is not a problem that can be solved.

I see a lot of talk about how obesity is a problem or how drug use is a problem. These are not problems. These are symptoms of a much bigger problem. Chalking it up to people just needing more discipline to solve the problem is such a massive cop-out it's unbelievable how many think that they are helping by saying it.

Sending a drug-dealer to prison doesn't fix a drug problem. It lowers the supply and increases the price, further increasing the burden on addicts that have become psychologically dependent on the drug. Trying to solve the "problem" of obesity directly results in toxic unhealthy diet culture and body shaming. Again, the 'solutions' are either worse than the problem, or simply make the problem worse. This is a concept we need to be mindful of when it comes to bad habits and discipline.

The actual source of many of these problems is depression and unhealthy coping mechanisms. Why are people depressed? Hm, look at the world. A million reasons. There's a lack of support and resources worldwide... or at least the distribution of these things is tilted towards those that have access to them. Perhaps people weren't meant to sit in a chair 12 hours a day staring at a screen and leveraging their paychecks to order Grubhub because they're too drained to prepare their own food. Go figure.

_{Really? These are the animals you chose to represent yourselves? Fitting.}

And the hypocrisy of it all is palpable.

A mass shooting will happen and republicans will downplay it and be like, "this is just a mental health issue." This is in response to the democrats who want to heavily regulate who can and can't own a deadly weapon, which is direct violation of the constitution itself. So what are the republicans doing to support mental health? lol. Nothing. That's a democrat thing. Suck it up and rub some mud on it, bitch. It's all very metal. Both sides are so far up their own asses it's unbelievable. Just another example of trying to fix the symptom of a problem is akin to putting a bandaid on a festering wound. No one wants to face the big problems, so they try to fix the little ones and just end up making it worse.

Conclusion

Whether good or bad, old habits die hard. We have a tendency to do things that were part of our routine even when we tell ourselves we aren't doing that thing anymore. This is often a good thing, which is why our brains do it in the first place. At the same time, we have a tendency to pay much more attention when things go wrong, and put focus & energy into those places than otherwise. If it aint broke don't fix it. A reactive strategy is efficient but unfortunately not preemptive.

All we can really do is try to get into a routine of good habits that keep us out of trouble and slowly push us in a forward direction (no matter how slowly). Never forget that we are animals (really weird ones), and the exponentially overarching technology we create makes the experience even stranger.

_{Ah yes, I feel better already.
Uncommitting from writing 30 posts in a row about Factorio is a smart move.
After all I come to Hive and my blog to get away from that nonsense.}

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