Action to Habit

By Taylor Johnston

What’s the relationship & differences between actions and habits?

Actions are the actual “doing” of steps that reverberate or ripple out into the world. The quality of that action is determined with how the world responds. Actions are not natural. Actions require effort, every time! Humans naturally resist effort.?

Habits are natural. While there is still effort required to take the action, when it’s habitual then it does not seem or feel like much if any effort is required. Habits become one’s new natural state. Not doing a habit feels and seems unnatural. Habits are not a starting place though.?

Habits can only be obtained through consistent, continual action of the same task. Habits are almost new levels of productivity. When a level is reached it takes little effort to remain there. To reach new levels requires much effort. Over time though, the same principle of instilling habits is applied to a larger/umbrella picture of ones habit building skill in general. Someone that has instilled or built 100 habits into their daily life will require less effort to instill the 101st habit or 105th habits vs the effort required for building the 3rd or 8th habit. They have developed a bigger habit of forming habits in general. They have the experience to know what it takes and what the benefits are to outweigh effort. Their ability to form new habits will almost seem effortless as they have done it so much. On the flip side you could say it likely feels natural to build habits and feels unnatural to not be putting forward effort to develop new habits.?

When riding a bike, the momentum of the bike does not occur until many consistent petals have been made to get to a speed where the wheel rolls itself for a certain distance without any actual effort, or petaling. If the rider continuing petaling with the momentum then petaling seems/feels effortless because the rider has reached the level of “habit”.?

Successful people typically have reached some level of this habit umbrella as they have likely developed many habits that allows them to operate easier on a higher level than most people that have yet to reach that level.