Well, I’ve missed the one-month mark and the two-month mark in Colombia, but yes, I’m Alive and Will Still Write Here. There have been, of course, several things I’ve noticed about my time in Colombia. Here’s one: I shouldn’t try to start a bunch of new things at the same time. But alas, here I am…

I’ve never called myself a creature of habit, but the erosion of circumstance and routine presents a surprisingly new challenge: I’ve literally had to decide on every single action. Consider, for a moment, all the things you do without lending any thought, like a morning coffee, showering, watching TV after work, even going to work.

There are a number of pithy maxims about this, including from philosopher William James: “All our life, so far as it has definite form, is but a mass of habits.” More precisely, a few researchers from Duke estimated that 40% of the things we do each day are habits, or actions we repeat each day without thought. That’s a startling amount of our day-to-day. This has been a reckoning of sorts for me in Colombia without the comfort of routines and familiarity. To be pithy yet again, another philosopher, Soren Kierkegaard, summed how I feel nicely: “Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”

Putting existentialism aside, there’s evidence for a finite limit to cognitive power in any given period of time. Take, for example, research from Behavioral Scientists Sendhill Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir on the impact of poverty on decision-making. One of their experiments ran like this: participants were divided into two groups based on reported household income, and half were presented with a hypothetical situation that required them to brainstorm how they would pay for half of either a $300 or a $3000 unexpected car payment. Following the thought experiment, all participants took a Raven’s Matrices test (a form of an IQ test). Well-off participants and all participants issued the $300 payment all performed similarly on the test. Participants who were less well-off, but were issued the $3000 payment? Test performance dropped significantly.

Researchers claim that the reason for this discrepancy is that the concentration required to think about how to solve for an unexpected payment in the absence of a financial surplus, even in a hypothetical situation, issues a “cognitive tax” on the ability to reason and decide in the test. The existence of a cognitive tax isn’t limited to financial decisions. Listen to the application of the insight of a cognitive tax former President Obama told Michael Lewis in 2012 about his daily routine:

“‘You’ll see I wear only gray or blue suits,’ [Obama] said. ‘I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make.’ He mentioned research that shows the simple act of making decisions degrades one’s ability to make further decisions. It’s why shopping is so exhausting. ‘You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia.’”

What’s so fascinating about this statement is the awareness that Obama has about the cognitive cost of decisions on other decisions, and his ability to design routines that eradicate decisions – or form habits – in order to prioritize others.

This kind of awareness isn’t something I’ve thought much about until now: namely, how do you intentionally decide which decisions are worth effort, and which should be delegated to habit? And how much habit do you want to be living in your life?

Indulge me, for a second. In brainstorming a system of prioritization for actions I want as habits or decisions, I’ve placed each on two spectrums: Reward from thinking about the action, and the reward from the desired action itself. Here’s a glimpse of what I’m thinking:

Pic

There are obvious groupings here:

  1. Actions in the top left, especially with larger frequencies, are ripe for distilling into habits. I don’t derive much benefit from thinking about them, but derive a substantial benefit from doing them.
  2. Actions in the bottom left are less important, but also generally easier to create. For example, I’m grabbing the first shirt I see in the closet right now without a lot of care.
  3. There’s a tremendous benefit to thinking about what I will read, whether in a book or in the news. Turning this into a habit creates a situation where I’m continually consuming information without much intentional effort of where, or whom, that information is coming from. It’s similar with the people I’m around.
  4. Bottom right: see Syntact Podcast, Government Series. It’s fun to think about; there would be practically no reward for me to try to implement a new government design – chance of success isn’t high.

A few more explanations, given these placements are entirely subjective, and would look different for you than they do for me (which is one reason I think this exercise is worth doing):

  • I’m not a foodie, and would much prefer to think very little about what I’m eating and eat the same, fairly healthy things everyday.
  • Speaking in Spanish is undyingly difficult for me to decide to do, especially if the other person knows English, but is really important for practice.
  • I don’t use a white lie much, but a commitment to never lying a) makes me a more ethical person, b) makes me a more trustworthy person, and c) frees me from having to think about whether I should lie or not.
  • I love coffee, so there’s a nuance to when, why, and how often I should drink it, where drinking would constitute the “desired action.”

There were quite a few jokes when I moved to Colombia (thanks, friends) that I would be making a completely new (hidden?) life here. Somehow, I don’t think recreating normal, everyday habits was the life remade they were talking about. But the complete change of circumstances for me has created opportunity to be conscious of the choices and automatic processes I have and create in my life right now. And it is worth spending some time considering. To quote Charles Duhigg in The Power of Habit, “This is the real power of habit: the insight that your habits are what you choose them to be.”

Have you thought about this before? If you have any thoughts, or ways that you’ve intentionally chosen which actions and decisions to replicate, I’d love to hear them.

Think everything I thought about here was a colossal waste of time? It’s entirely possible, and Kierkegaard might agree with this futility: “I see it all perfectly; there are two possible situations – one can either do this or that. My honest opinion and my friendly advice is this: do it or do not do it – you will regret both.”