Bad habits: Your house is holding you back | Hacker News Reader

Bad habits: Your house is holding you back

thebehavioralscientist.com

28 pointsimartin2k12 comments

There's a corollary to this: Sometimes your house isn't the thing holding you back. Sometimes, getting the right environment won't work, because the problem is in your expectations, not in what you're doing.

When you keep thinking "If only I had X / lived in Y, I could Z", you're really failing to think about (as the author said) the things you can do in your current situation.

But again, that intervention in your current situation isn't magic, so you have to start with your expectations. Can I do 10% better here? Possibly, indeed. Can I change everything at once? Highly unlikely. Is moving to a different place going to make you a different person? Nope. It might make some things more possible, but it's just a possibility.

Same thing for a student like myself. I get easily distracted by websites such as HN, Reddit, and YT that I can't focus or do any work.

When I'm at the library, suddenly I feel no urge to waste time on those websites and am consistently productive (albeit slow).

I feel like your point can also apply to the workplace as well.

I oddly felt the opposite as a student. At the library, I couldn't concentrate because I couldn't relax. At home, I did waste a lot of time — but I was relaxed, so I could engage in different behaviours. 50 minutes of writing, 10 minutes of game, 40 minutes of writing, 20 minutes of game, 30 minutes of writing, 30 minutes of game, 20 minutes of writing, 40 minutes of game, 10 minutes of writing… oh, it's done. Well, gaming all the rest of the night!

I think there is some good advice here, for young people. But also a caveat.

I moved around a lot when I was younger, and now live several hundred miles from my hometown. In my new place, I have friends that have never moved-- they are my age, yet they still have high-school friends, family, and acquaintances that stretch back decades. This brings a web of trust that's really strong. Having a "place" in a community is immensely advantageous.

There are pros to moving around, but there are also pros to staying put.

I think this is a confusion of causation and correlation: When the time comes and you are so motivated to do something that you're willing to move, your motivation levels are probably so high that you could have changed without moving. Or perhaps moving is just like any other tool for behavior change: sometimes it works, sometimes it does not.

I know this flies in the face of everything the author said, but I'm reluctant when it comes to accepting anecdotal evidence. At least when the suggested remedy is as expensive as moving.

Your reasoning is as much an anecdote but it doesn't even come from actual personal experience.

There are evidences that moving to a different environment has an impact on behaviour, see https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2012/01/02/1444317...

Granted that article is click-baity and devoid of helpful and actionable advice. Ít's a blog post to promote a self-help coach dude.

edit: funny, looks like he has an update https://www.thebehavioralscientist.com/blog/cheaper-ways-to-...

Yeah, I think this has worked for me also. I have have been stuck with my place/job for sometime now. I should probably look for a change.

It seems this could easily apply to, say, your office or your job, as it can to your house.

If you are not motivated to train, go to the gym anyway and sit in the bubble pool or something. So that going to the gym becomes a habit. But the trick is to condition your training so that you always feel fresh and motivated.

An extended trip to a new city (at least 8-10 days) does the same thing IMO, especially a place you’ve never visited before.

Oh duh, to change my life I just need to pack up and move! Why is this a top post--what have we become here?

I'm all for behavioral tweaking, such as adding new behaviors onto things you're already doing. E.g after you brush your teeth you do 2 push ups. Those work a lot of the time and there has been a lot great posts on HN about that.

But, this as any advice is a luxury to even think makes any rational sense. Context is a benefit from being able to move at will. And while I'm not condemning view points of any one type of person, but because you're privileged to be able to move doesn't mean it's worth anything to be providing for people actually looking to change their lives; and find real 'context' in the environment they are unable to move out of.

Moving to a new place is fantastically inexpensive. He didn't say you had to switch countries, just neighborhoods.

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