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Notes on Habit by William James
Based on the book Habit by American Psychologist William James published in 1887
The first result of it is that habit simplifies the movements required to achieve a given result, makes them more accurate and diminishes fatigue.
The next result is that habit diminishes the conscious attention with which our acts are performed.
–The marksman sees the bird, and, before he knows it, he has aimed and shot.
–In action grown habitual, what instigates each new muscular contraction to take place in its appointed order is not a thought or a perception, but the sensation occasioned by the muscular contraction just finished. A strictly voluntary act has to be guided by idea, perception, and volition, throughout its whole course
–What allows a knitter to continue knitting while chatting and engaging in other activities is the ‘feeling’ of it, however slight or minor, there is a feeling that keeps the motions in motion. If I hold a violin in my left hand, I don’t need to focus on it because if it starts to slip, my muscles feel it and the attention is automatically drawn to it and it is held.
–Woe is to the person who is plagued with indecision and has no habits, for habits free up the higher powers of the mind to do proper work. If regret and deliberation plague every decision, no energy left.
–Prior to 20 is to learn personal habits: vocalization and pronunciation, gesture, motion, and address. Hardly ever is language learned without an accent after age 20; same with attire, no matter how much money you have, he can’t learn to dress like a gentleman-born. Merchants offer him wares, and he simply cannot buy the right things.
–Period of 20-30 is the formation of intellectual and professional habits.
–‘The Moral Habits’ by Professor Bain posits that in learning a new habit, one must 1. launch ourselves with as strong and decided an initiative as possible (to put ourselves in a position that encourages the new way and discourages the old as much as possible), 2. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life (every loss results in the undoing of many victories, until the pattern of victory is strong enough). He who every day makes a fresh resolve is like one who, arriving at the edge of the ditch he is to leap, forever stops and returns for a fresh run. Without unbroken advance there is no such thing as accumulation of the ethical forces possible. 3. Seize the very first possible opportunity to ACT on every resolution you make, and on every emotional prompting you may experience in the direction of the habits you aspire to gain. It is the motor effects of executing that resolves and aspirations communicate the new ‘set’ of habits to the brain. so you must act, or else never get past the stage of empty gesture making.
— No matter how full a reservoir of maxims one may possess, and no matter how good one’s sentiments may be, if one have not taken advantage of every concrete opportunity to ad, one’s character may remain entirely unaffected for the better. With mere good intentions, hell is proverbially paved. And this is an obvious consequence of the principles we have laid down. A ‘character, ‘ as J. S. Mill says, ‘is a completely fashioned will’; and a will, in the sense in which he means it, is an aggregate of tendencies to act in a firm and prompt and definite way upon all the principal emergencies of life. A tendency to act only becomes effectively ingrained in us in proportion to the uninterrupted frequency with which the actions actually occur, and the brain ‘grows’ to their use. Every time a resolve or a fine glow of feeling evaporates without bearing practical fruit is worse than a chance lost; it works so as positively to hinder future resolutions and emotions from taking the normal path of discharge. There is no more contemptible type of human character than that of the nerveless sentimentalist and dreamer, who spends his life in a weltering sea of sensibility and emotion, but who never does a manly concrete deed.
–All Goods are disguised by the vulgarity of their concomitants, in this work-a-day world; but woe to him who can only recognize them when he thinks them in their pure and abstract form ! The habit of excessive novel reading and theatre-going will produce true monsters in this line. The weeping of a Russian lady over the fictitious personages in the play, while her coachman is freezing to death on his seat outside, is the sort of thing that everywhere happens on a less glaring scale. Even the habit of excessive indulgence in music, for those who are neither performers themselves nor musically gifted enough to take it in a purely intellectual way, has probably a relaxing effect upon the character. One becomes filled with emotions which habitually pass without prompting to any deed, and so the inertly sentimental condition is kept up. The remedy would be, never to suffer one’s self to have an emotion at a concert, without expressing it afterward in some active way. 1 Let the expression be the least thing in the world speaking genially to one’s aunt, or giving up one’s seat in a horse-car, if nothing more heroic offers but let it not fail to take place.
–We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. The drunken Rip Van Winkle, in Jefferson’s play, excuses himself for every fresh dereliction by saying, *I won’t count this time!’ Well! he may not count it, and a kind Heaven may not count it; but it is being counted none the less. Down among his nerve-cells and fibers the molecules are counting it, registering and storing it up to be used against him when the next temptation comes. Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out. Of course, this has its good side as well as its bad one. As we become permanent drunkards by so many separate drinks, so we become saints in the moral, and authorities and experts in the practical and scientific spheres, by so many separate acts and hours of work.
–Let no youth have any anxiety about the upshot of his education, whatever the line of it may be. If he keep faithfully busy each hour of the working-day, he may safely leave the final result to itself. He can with perfect certainty count on waking up some fine morning, to find himself one of the competent ones of his generation, in whatever pursuit he may have singled out. Silently, between all the details of his business, the power of judging in all that class of matter will have built itself up within him as a possession that will never pass away. Young people should know this truth in advance. The ignorance of it has probably engendered more discouragement and faintheartedness in youths embarking on arduous careers than all other causes put together.
Resources
This post is part of AttemptedLiving’s Life Education Curriculum, a collection of core knowledge everyone should have.
Lifestyle Advice
Limit your time on electronic devices to improve your sleep and critical thinking while reducing aggression and risk of obesity. – Yahoo
Limit your time skimming on the internet, research shows time spent online lowers your ability to read slowly, comprehensively, and thoroughly – Washington Post
The Health Hazards of Sitting by The Washington Post explains how poor sitting posture and too much sitting can negatively affect your life. Bad for Organs, Brain, Back, Muscles, Legs, and increases Mortality. (Standing Desk Options)
More Resources: Sitting for More Than Three Hours a Day Cuts Life Expectancy – WSJ
Public Health Research: Sedentary behavior and life expectancy and The importance of non-exercise physical activity for cardiovascular health and longevity
Don’t go grocery shopping right after exercise or a work out–your body needs rest and food. Plan the food ahead of time–the danger is that you’ll end up shopping at the grocery store longer than you expect, buying more than you expect, delaying your rest and food while expending more energy.
Don’t go to the grocery store while hungry–again, your body needs food so you should plan ahead for your own hunger. Shopping while hungry results in strange combinations of foods and impulse buys that waste money and aren’t healthy–sound decisions are better made while not starving.
Don’t exercise within 4-6 hours of sleeping, your body is typically energized by exercise, making it hard to sleep anyway, and it needs time to recover from exercise before it is ready for rest.
Don’t eat within 1-3 hours of sleeping because Eating Before Bed Causes Fatigue
This post is part of AttemptedLiving’s Life Education Curriculum, a collection of core knowledge everyone should have. Look under “Self Improvement”
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