Boredworkers.com

I couldn’t locate my sports shoes this morning as I was packing for gym. I take it out of my bag when I get home and place it at the same spot. So you can imagine the duress when I looked to find that the pair of Reeboks were not where they were supposed to be. I frantically rummaged around the shoe cabinet to no avail. At the end, I had to leave it and head to work. That’s when I realised that I am, and invariably every other homosapien on this good earth is, a creature of habit.

Habit (noun)
A recurrent, often unconscious pattern of behavior that is acquired through frequent repetition.

It wasn’t a sudden realisation but rather a fact that I’ve known for a long time. I admit to having many habits, some good, some not so good, and others down right bad. The bad ones I could do without. However, the good ones keeps things in order and running smoothly. These are the little nuances that help keep your sanity and save you hours of time spent worrying and fretting about nothing.

Take for example the incident of the missing shoes. On a normal day, I would have grabbed the dirty old pair, stuffed them in the bag and be on my way in less time than it takes for you to say “stinky old shoes”. However, as things would have it, I fretted for five minutes, imagining the worse. Had someone stolen them while I was not looking? Were they out in the backyard weathering the elements after a good washing? Have the fungi colony grown feet and walked off with my shoes?! Random thoughts triggered by an uncommon event. Anxiety is not a good feeling and the disstress over something menial so early in the morning is something that should be eliminated quickly. Hence my decision to walk away from it all and figure it out another time.

I can never understand how some people manage to deal with this kind of stress on a daily basis due to the lack of habit. Have you ever misplaced your keys and turned the house upside down in search of them? I know of people who do so everyday because they have failed to develope a system to work by. Simple good habits save you time that could be better spent on more fruitful undertakings. It leaves you free to think about more important things.

My old manager has a habit of taking his lunch at the same restaurant every working day and the people there know him by sight as well as his usual order. His philosophy is that it saves him the headache of mulling over an unfamiliar menu. Plus he gets a nifty discount for his continued patronage. While some may find this bland, especially in a country where we are spoilt for choice in terms of food, he does have his point. His eating habit is in contrast with the rest of the department which spends at least 15 minutes of their lunch time standing in the building lobby undecided on what to eat. While everyone else is figuring out where to go for grub, his mind is wrapped around the next big thing that would rake in the profits. This practice coming from someone who takes in a good million annually. You start to think that perhaps we are going about things the wrong way?

Going beyond the little habits, you have the big ones such as The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People. These are touted as keys to a successful life. True or not, it is subjective to each different individual.

But really, the point is that we’re all creatures of habit. Not much of a point but still, our habits are part of our identity, defines who we are, and how we go about business. Nurture your good habits and weed out the bad ones. Like it or not, they play an important role in our lives. Having said that, what are your little habits?