Rediscovering Habits

Recently I got LASIK on both of my eyes, and I noticed something interesting: A lot of the habits that I've formed over the past decades were suddenly in turmoil. I had created a pretty solid morning routine that included things such as face cream, weighing myself, brushing my teeth. I've always struggled with forming good habits, and worked hard over the past 2 decades to fix that, with around 10 "steps" depending on how you slice it.

Regularly over the past month and a half I've noticed that I keep missing certain things during my morning routine that had been effectively second nature, that I barely had to think about.

The more I thought about it, the more I noticed this coincides, in part, with the fact that putting in/taking out contacts are no longer part of that routine. That seemed weird to me; why would one habit formed affect other (unrelated) habits?

I've concluded that while forming my habits over the years, that many of them were 'tied' to my existing routines, to help me form them.

Putting on my contacts in the morning was necessary before moving on to some other step. For instance, I don't want to get face cream on my hands before touching my contact lenses and eyes. It was an action that I wired myself to recognize before moving on to the next habit. Taking away putting my contacts in have thrown the timing of the rest of the routine into chaos.

I'll probably spend some time researching this from a scientific perspective, as I'm sure this isn't uncommon when broken down to reasoning and logic in how our brains and habits function.

Just an interesting revelation I wanted to share.

I'm currently reconsidering the purpose of my blog and website. I'll touch on things around my life, I think, but I'll still write primarily about things I've learned as a programmer that might help others. Let me know what you think by sending me a message on Mastodon or any other medium you find me.