The Wisdom of Habits

Reflections on how we become our aspirations

Last year, at SXSW, the organizers invited me to be creative with the format of my mainstage talk. I decided to do something similar to the year before—speak for about 25 minutes, and then have an onstage conversation with someone.

The challenge in both cases was the same. How do I find someone kind enough and gracious enough and skilled enough to guide that conversation?

The first year, the SXSW recommended Laurie Santos, host of The Happiness Lab, which immediately felt like a good fit. This last year, they asked me to suggest someone from their roster of speakers.

I wasn’t sure where to begin. There were so many amazing people, and so many of them that I’d love to talk to. I scrolled and filtered and came up with a dream roster, and I ultimately landed on an author who I had read years ago and whose work had really impacted me: Charles Duhigg.

Now for the scary part. Write him a cold email and ask if he’d be willing to join me. The more I looked at his bio and his incredible accomplishments, the less likely it felt that he would even respond to me. I thought about not bothering him, but then I mustered up the email and clicked send on the email.

It turns out, there was nothing to be scared of. Charles responded almost immediately. He was even more gracious and kind than I had hoped. We chatted on the phone a couple of times, met at SXSW, and had an incredible conversation on stage. I knew he had so much to offer, and I wanted to turn the questions to him, but he was humble and generous and kept bringing it back to me and what I wanted to share.

It’s not often that you meet people who live up to your expectations, and when it happens, it can feel so heartening. It was also enough to make me want to stay in touch with Charles and continue learning from him. When I heard he was going to be speaking at Aspen Ideas Festival in June, I shot him a note and asked if he’d hang out with me again, this time with the caveat that I’d get to interview him. This time, I didn’t think twice about bothering him.

Charles agreed, and we had a great time in Aspen, and I especially loved our conversation in the studio about the wisdom and practice of habits. I’m linking the full episode to our conversation in Wisdom & Practice here, and I’m also sharing an excerpt of his insights below.

Happy reading and listening!

Charles Duhigg: Look, I think there's some people who believe that you're praying five times a day. Maybe it's like God doesn't pick up on the first four rings, but he definitely picks up on the fifth ring. So if you don't do it five times a day, you're going to miss your chance to really influence him. I don't think many people actually believe that, right? I know plenty of Muslims. I know plenty of Sikh, who pray as they can, but if they miss a prayer, if they're traveling, they don't believe that suddenly God dislikes them.

What does this practice of five times a day provide? I think for many people it provides a moment of contemplation, a moment of familiarity, a moment of comfort, a moment of relaxation. And so, this discipline gives us something that feels oftentimes a little luxurious, right? Like the ability to relax and to feel comfortable and to find a space. And oftentimes, at least in the Muslim tradition, prayer involves like, you know, bowing your head. It's a stretch, right? So you're actually mobilizing your body. You're increasing your mobility. These are all things that we do in other contexts that feel really good. And the discipline there, I think, is the discipline of allowing ourselves to be present and enjoy our day as much as it is to commune with the divine.

And I think that when we think about discipline, we often think of it as a negative or a hard thing, that I'm denying myself a temptation. But there's just as much discipline in giving myself what I crave, because that craving is a craving for something good, which is taking a moment to reflect, taking a moment to feel comfortable, taking a moment to stretch. That is also discipline. And that is something that I think benefits our lives.

Simran Jeet Singh: Yeah, you know, the question that's popping into my mind is a question I get from people all the time, which is, it's a version of why do you have to wear a turban or when do you get to cut your hair? And in the way that those questions are asked, I can sense somebody's feeling that choosing to live with a religious discipline is like choosing to put on shackles.

Charles Duhigg: That the turban is a burden to you. The beard is a burden to you. But do you feel like it's a burden?

Simran Jeet Singh: I don't, and this is what's interesting to me in hearing what you're saying. It's almost like the entirety of my religious practice, my spiritual practice, is about achieving liberation, right? That's a term that a lot of us use in religious and spiritual traditions. It's like there's something liberating about choosing to live with this religious discipline. And so culturally, right, in our society today, we think about discipline and habit formation as rules that we have to follow. And I'm not a big rule follower, and I'm not somebody who's really felt like they have to live by all the rules of our society.

But I do think there's something lost when we think about discipline in such a limited way as you're describing that we refuse to take it on.

Listen to the full episode on Wisdom & Practice here.