The idea of developing good habits is de rigueur these days.
Personally, I am a “general” fan of personal habits. I like some good predictability and structure in my days. I brush my teeth every morning, I get outside every day, I eat my veggies. Habits help me free up my thinking for more pressing issues, like helping my kiddo with math homework, and tackling climate change.
With that said, I have some issues with the gleeful embrace of micro-managing one’s habits in the quest for increased productivity, and/or for increased individual wealth and success. But that critique is for another blog post entirely. This post is about shifting our thinking about habits socially and collectively.
One of the top books these days touting the awesomeness of habits is Atomic Habits, by James Clear. I’ve just started reading it, and it’s been a useful read so far. Notice I said useful, and not totally amazing. While Clear does provide some very accessible and convincing advice about why healthy/productive habits are “good” and how to develop them well, what grates me about this book is its almost exclusive focus on individuals.
“Uuumm, Julia,” you might be thinking, “did you not just cite some individual habits that you, yourself, practice every day? How can individual habits be a problem?” YES! Of course, individuals have habits, and individuals can develop more useful habits so we can each live a fulfilling life in whatever way works for each of us.
Most “helpful” (or self-help) books focus on how we can each individually do things differently to help ourselves, as individuals, be “better” or “more successful.” Clear’s book is no exception.
But I’m more interested to think about each of our individual actions put together make up our collective world. Like, when we each hop in our car to drive to the store (as an individual behaviour, or practice), collectively we are contributing to increased pollution, and lowering our collective demand for accessible public transit, or other sustainable modes of transportation like bike lanes.
Here’s an example from Atomic Habits that got me thinking.
Clear discusses a Japanese safety practice in their rail system called Pointing-and-Calling (p. 63). Truthfully my dudes, I’m married to a transit nerd, so I was actually aware of this practice already… (taking public transit as a family is often wonderfully and woefully embarrassing for our children).
Before a train departs a station, each staff member points at and calls out a series of things, and having identified each detail aloud (like, pointing at the timetable when the train will depart, and stating the exact, current time), will call out “all clear!” once satisfied all the details are safe (or stop the train from leaving if there is a problem). It’s a practice each individual does to bring unconscious patterns and events to a conscious level. It’s easier to see if there is a problem when you are using all your senses (see it, hear it, touch it, etc), and vocalizing it; you can do something about the problem if you see it in the first place.
Frankly, I do this at home in the mornings, as we are all trying to get out the door (“Keys!” [pats pocket], “Wallet!” [checks bag]).
Clear uses this Japanese railway example to highlight how unconscious behaviours individually need conscious attention as part of improving individual habits. It’s harder to develop a better habit, if you don’t see how current habits might be problems. But what Clear misses from the railway example is that the individual actions of these staff members are for the collective good. To make their system safer, so other individuals within the system can be safe. In the Japanese rail system, cultural values have helped them organize a process where each individual must act, do things, use their senses in combination with their voices, in order to help everyone else. (other rail systems have taken up similar practices, by the way… it is pretty cool!).
Here’s another example, albeit totally different.
I took my younger kiddo to see the Barbie movie with her friend. I loved this film (so many things to love about it).
The filmmakers powerfully use story to make the patterns and habits of patriarchal society transparent. Sometimes it’s hard to see patriarchy as a problem because we are so enmeshed with it; it’s almost like the air we breathe. But through the story, we experience (meaning: we sense and feel) different ways patriarchal systems/structures turn Barbie and other women into objects, don’t value emotions alongside rational thought, create processes and ways of interacting that help men thrive, along with other things. We see how certain values are enacted and repeated by individuals to create a particular culture where men are uplifted, and women, non-binary and trans folks are not. Characters in the film eventually come to articulate different ways that women and others are oppressed in a patriarchal society (for example, saying: “It is literally impossible to be a woman… Like, we have to always be extraordinary, but somehow we’re always doing it wrong,” and “But never forget that the system is rigged. So find a way to acknowledge that but also always be grateful” and “I’m just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself into knots so that people will like us” among other gems), and some characters are actually “deprogrammed” from the patriarchy (which was one of my kiddo’s favourite parts!).
This combination of engaging our senses and feelings and thoughts through the story, and through the characters using their voices to articulate what they experience, is very powerful for all of us to see patriarchy as a problem. The point is not for individuals to develop better individual habits in their own bubbles, to thrive on their own. By creating better individual habits (like, offering compassion to ourselves and others, slowing down and considering relationships among different parts of life in decision making, seeing how small daily actions affect our world and adjusting them accordingly, among so many), we can also create better systems and processes for everyone’s benefit. By seeing the problem, we can do something about it collectively.