Having good habits and being well-adjusted - do you want it for yourself, or not?

[Ghost of the dead horse]

By habits, I mean the stuff that people use to do. There's drinking habits, eating habits, work habits, etc.. does one usually lock one's bike, take their keys with them, return assignments on time, what kind of hobbies one has, does one return calls, etc.

Then there's specialized habits, like if one were a programmer, he/she would have habits of leaving messy code, neat code, optimizing or not optimizing, commenting or not commenting code etc.

Obviously good habits take anyone a long way to some kind of success. Then there's the burden of making those habits an actuality. Some kind of punctuality might be needed to maintain some habits, courtesy for others.

I guess that this is much the same topic as being well-adjusted. I guess it means some kind of "normal" or "standardized" behavior in a way, but also "best practice". Also learned behavior. It might also be something that people - perhaps experts - usually recommend to do.

Perhaps the definition of "well-adjusted" might refer to good habits and practices in the social arena.

So, how do you feel about this kind of thing? Do you want that kind of stuff for yourself, or not? If not, why so?

My answer
Obviously people need a bit of these kind of things to do well. I think much of what I listed goes against being individual, even if they were good things in theory. I don't really like doing stuff the same way, the expected way over and over again, but I grudginly accept that I can't improve over some tried and tested practices in human life. Then I have to comform.

Then, a lot of these kind of things are boring; they aren't the essence of life. For the most part, I don't like to spend time thinking how I should comform to the norm.

Then again, everybody does a great deal of things that people usually do. Much of the human life is extremely similar for everyone. Going to sleep, taking care of health in basic ways etc. I don't think it's the most glamorous part of the experience of being human, though.

I've usually understood good practices, good habits quite late. I've asked myself, why do people act this way? Why do they do things this way? I've usually found many good practices after trial and error, and many I've learned from a book or another authoritative source.

Later in life, I have set it as my goal to learn good habits for myself. I now value them, although I'm not any good at them. I tend to change my good habits on a whim, and over-indulge on food/drink. My work habits are erratic.

I'm now trying to learn some specific skills related to my work, and my problem areas are mostly in following up the good instructions. I tend to deviate so much from the norm.

I feel I'm an underperformer because of this, and I'd like to learn good habits more easily. As for social adjustment, I feel I'm well-adjusted. Some things I learn well, I'd just like to have more of it.

 

[rav3n]

Good habits don't have to equal conformity. There are so many ways to facilitate and complete tasks and not all or even most, include linear thinking or actions.

You're fighting linear thinking since it doesn't come naturally to you. Don't fight it. Ignore it. Take the top down approach with problem solving where you view life starting with the executive summary and then work backwards to understand detail to the level that's necessary to complete your tasks.

 

[Coriolis]

Yes. Mainstream habits are very often bad ones, such as overspending, eating too much junk food, being wasteful, etc. Developing and maintaining good habits is important to me, but my definition of "goodness" is whether it works, whether it helps me get things done in my life, and not whether everyone (or anyone) else is doing it.

 

[Thalassa]

I was very (un)fortunate to have good habits metaphorically beaten into me by a very SJ upbringing...this means I have elaborate teeth care rituals and always wash my face before bed and never, ever sleep in make-up. I'm sure there are other things I do which I don't even think about. Oh, for example, I take vitamins and almost always drink low-fat or skim milk.

On the other hand, because of mainstream American eating habits, adolescent rebellion, picking up some of the habits of my friends or other loved ones, and my natural tendency to go to bed later than other people, there has definitely had to be some effort on my part as an adult to correct poor health habits I developed in my teens and early twenties.

However, one ironic thing (or perk?) of my seemingly rebellious sleeping habits is that I think I actually get MORE sleep than a lot of people. I'm pretty tenacious about getting 8-10 hours a sleep per night, sometimes more ...though there have definitely been pockets of my life where I got considerably less...and I've gone out of my way to do things like schedule classes or intentionally work at certain kinds of jobs so that I get enough sleep. I additionally feel that this sleep is necessary to make up for some of the heinous things I did to my body eariler in life.

So that would be an emphatic YES.

 

[kyuuei]

^ Im with this poster on this subject. Definitely, good habits are subjective. What is considered good for you in the first place helps create who you are. If recycling is something that makes you feel good, it speaks about your persona.. but if you don't recycle, you're not a negative nasty non-conformist. Its pretty superficial. You're not going to conform into a robot if you start putting your keys into a bowl by the door everyday to avoid losing them which frequently makes you late for work. Ya know?

I tend to find that, if it's important to me, I have a system of some sort in place to make sure it's priority in some way, shape, or form. Everything else is subjective and depends entirely on whether I care enough to think about it. If it's efficient, Im generally for it. I like procrastinating about leaving until the last second, therefore, I'll keep my keys in the same place incase I wanna zip out somewhere to make it on time. I hate paying for the dentist, therefore, I keep my teeth as clean as possible for basically free/really cheap.

The motivations why the good habits are there is more of the concern than the good habit itself. 10 people can recycle for 10 different reasons. I want good habits for myself, but because the outcomes make me happy. Im not entirely delighted in the habit itself, just the outcome.