Habits and Traditions are Hard to Break

I spend too much time in hotels. For the most part, the service is good and I don’t have many serious complaints, other than missing my family. But I have a pet peeve. Regardless of hotel, every bathroom has the edges of the toilet paper folded into a little triangle. I don’t know about you, but I really don’t want someone folding my toilet paper. 

It’s unknown who was the first to fold hotel toilet paper, but it’s so pervasive that one photographer published an entire book of photos of toilet paper folds across the world. Some say it shows guests that the room has been cleaned, but in my opinion, a clean room shows that the room has been cleaned, regardless of toilet paper origami. 

There are quirks in all societies that really don’t add value but, for some reason or another, have stuck with us year after year. Some are frivolous wastes of time and money, like asking a groundhog to predict climate. Some you may have never considered but are similarly absurd: the traditions of men wearing ties and women wearing high heels, neither of which serves any purpose. And some are downright dangerous: college hazing and the running of the bulls come to mind. 

Why do we do such irrational things? Many traditions started with a legitimate reason. For example, horses were traditionally mounted from the left because the sword is carried on the left hip. It would be awkward and potentially dangerous to swing your sword over a horse, so the right leg swings over instead. It makes perfect sense. But it’s been a very long time since the vast majority of horseback riders wielded a sword, and it is still taught that you mount a horse from the left side. 

Traditions are really nothing more than cultural habits. And as absurd as it may seem, habits are incredibly important for brain efficiency. There is no need for your brain to fully engage in routine tasks like showering or brushing your teeth. You’ve done those things a million times, so those tasks happen on autopilot while your brain processes other things. Even when it comes to larger or less frequent tasks, habits take over. Like picking up candles and a cake for a friend’s birthday, for example. You don’t have to expend a lot of brainpower on it (never mind that blowing on a cake others will eat is a particularly gross tradition). 

Cultural traditions are the combined habits of people, compounded by time. Like habits, they are reinforced the more we use them. But then they are reinforced across many people, so their power becomes exponentially strong. Cultural habits often become cultural addictions. And kicking an addiction is one of the most difficult things for the human brain.  

So why have traditions in the first place? It turns out they (mostly) help us. As we evolved and created society, helpful habits grew into time-honored traditions. In the pre-refrigerator era, avoiding certain food became an important survival instinct that a few lucky guts made into a habit. Over time, traditions like eating kosher saved countless people without good dietary habits from food that was harmful. The mind creates habits to provide survival shortcuts for our brains; cultures create traditions to provide survival shortcuts for their people.

But folding toilet paper, really? Well, in our modern society, our habits and traditions can run amuck. We are preconditioned toward traditions and if something sticks, our cultures don’t have mechanisms for removing a tradition, other than through the slow passage of time. So we can all rest assured and toast (yes, another tradition) to the possibility that our great grandkids will no longer be presented with folded toilet paper.

Note: A version of this article was first published in USA Today, but because of the importance of the subject matter, we felt it was worth including on Linkedin, where we tend to get more feedback and a lively discussion.