Thinking Lately No.1
Habits, integrity, change
I have been thinking lately… about the gap between the person I am in my head and the person I am in the world. This is commonly known as cognitive dissonance. Closing this distance has been a painful process, but I’ve come to believe it is the foundation of integrity.
Over the past few years, I’ve been auditing my life. A year ago, my days looked entirely different than they do now. This shift didn’t happen overnight; it happened through a process of small, deliberate changes.
You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do - Carl Jung
The Power of the Pivot
In my work as a software engineer, we rarely wait for a “perfect” product to launch. We release a version that works and then improve it over time. Think of the original iPhone. It famously launched without the ability to copy/paste. Instead of waiting years for a flawless device, they released what they had and added features as they went.
I realized I was waiting for a “finished” version of myself to suddenly appear rather than just starting. Now, if I want to change a habit, I don’t try to reinvent my entire life on a Monday morning. I make a small adjustment, let it settle, and then make another one. It’s about building momentum in stages rather than failing a massive overhaul.
The Speed Limit of the Mind
We often hear that it takes 21 days to form a habit, but the reality is much more fluid. It can take anywhere from a few weeks to most of a year. I’ve found it helpful to visualize habits as highways.
Every time you repeat a behavior, you’re paving a road. An old habit is a 70mph highway; it’s smooth, fast, and effortless. A new, positive habit is a dirt path with a 15mph speed limit. When I’m tired or stressed, my brain naturally wants to take the 70mph route because it is the path of least resistance. Recognizing this doesn’t make the change easy, but it makes the struggle feel less like a failure and more like a reality. I’m just working on paving the new road.
Everything around you is going to change, as soon as you change the things around you. - Unknown
Reclaiming Intent
We are the sum of our habits. Habits become automatic actions, such as brushing our teeth, making the bed, or scrolling on your phone. However, these defaults can easily overflow and drown out our actual values.
I’ve always loved learning, but recently I caught myself “learning” through the passive scrolling of social media rather than the active engagement of books. My actions didn’t match who I wanted to be. To fix this, I had to be honest about my environment. I deleted the apps that encouraged mindless scrolling, only to find myself replacing them with new ways to waste time. I eventually refined my YouTube subscriptions and used tools to block shorts and recommended feeds entirely, forcing myself to be intentional about what I consume rather than being a passenger to an algorithm.
The Domino Effect
These small changes created a domino effect. By changing just my breakfast, and then my dinner, I stabilized my health without the shock of a total lifestyle shift. By curating my digital space, I found the mental clarity to focus more on the things I value and this overflowed into other aspects of my life.
I’m now reading more than I have in years. I find myself relating the ethics and stories from my books to my everyday interactions with my friends and colleagues. I host a weekly discussion group on ethics and I lead a book club. My passions are finally starting to show up in my real-world conversations.
Making a choice that is 1 percent better or 1 percent worse seems insignificant in the moment, but over the span of moments that make up a lifetime, these choices determine the difference between who you are and who you could be. - James Clear
Conclusion
This approach is slow. There are days when I slip back onto the 70mph highway of an old habit. But because I view myself as a work in progress, I just keep making adjustments. Incremental change leads to large maintainable results.
Is there a gap between who you are and who you want to be? Is there a small change or adjustment you can make today? Do you have any other ways to successfully change a habit?
Resources
Additional Resources
Thank you for making it this far and giving me your time. I am Johnathan Croft, a software engineer and philosophy student. This is part of my "Thinking Lately" series, which I intend to be an exploration of topics relevant to me and a space to practice articulating my thoughts in written form. This was also an abridged version of my post to “test the waters”. If you are interested in seeing more, I also started a book club below and will be posting related content there as well.
