Habit: The Household Wonder Worker

Imagine the television pitch:

"Special offer! Not sold in stores! The amazing Household Wonder Worker will take your house from chaos to castle in only 21 days. It'll speed your cleaning, calm your chaos and cut your clutter. Backed by scientific research, our product is guaranteed to bring order and serenity to your disorganized home. Don't wait! Get it today--and put our 21-day Wonder Worker to work for you!"

You say you have the phone in one hand and a credit card in the other? Sounds that good, does it?

Sorry, television viewers. Yes, the Amazing Household Wonder Worker is the most powerful secret weapon in the war against disorganization and clutter--but you can't buy it, not in stores, or anywhere. You have to build your own, but it's free for the making. Put it to work for you, and it'll lead you, step-by-step, out of the darkness of disorganization and into the light.

The Amazing Household Wonder Worker? Habit.

let the force be with you

Such a small word for such a powerful force. "Habit" seems mild, benign--fussy, even. Yet a habit works like a snowball, perched at the top of a snow-covered mountain. It takes a tiny little effort to push the snowball over the edge, but look out! By the time it reaches the bottom, that little habit has the momentum and effect of an avalanche.

So, too, with the habits we build into our lives. Tiny little changes, unnoticed in themselves, have a momentous effect on our house, our family, our lives.

What's the secret? Momentum. It takes energy and thought to form a good habit, much like it takes energy and intention to push that little snowball over the edge. Once in place, however, a habit gains in strength and effect with each repetition, building all the power of an avalanche behind it. Put a platoon of good habits to work for you, and you'll triumph in the war against chaos and disorganization.

anatomy of a habit

Not that habits are mysterious things. We all have a brace of them, for good or bad. Does each day begin with two cups of coffee and the newspaper? Habit! Are you accustomed to fueling weekly grocery shopping trips with a maple bar from the supermarket bakery? Habit! Do you always place your handbag on the floor of the car, behind the driver's seat? There's that habit again!

If habits are familiar creatures, why are they so very difficult to start--or to change? Go back to that snowball. Yes, it's a bit of a nuisance to make it, isn't it? You have to get your hands wet and cold and numb, and pack the snow tightly. You must perch the snowball on it's ledge just so, and then give the silly thing a push. Once you do, though, look out!

The analogy explains why good habits can be so difficult to start, and bad habits so difficult to end. Setting up good habits means creating conscious, intentional change. Ending bad ones means countering the tremendous, built-up force of a thousand repetitions.

it takes a habit to stop a habit

How do you form a good habit? The concept is simple: decide what you want to do, and do it each day for 21 days. [To the CEO's knowledge, the 21-day time period first appeared in pop psychology via Dr. Maxwell Maltz, author of The Power of Psychocybernetics. A plastic surgeon, Dr. Maltz noticed that it took 21 days for amputees to cease feeling phantom sensations in the amputated limb. From that somewhat obscure beginning, the 21-day phenomenon has evolved into a staple of self-change literature. Something of a habit, you might say.]

If the idea is simple, the devil is in the details. Making a new habit is hard work! Each new habit--so simple, so sanguine--must turn aside the formidable energy of an entrenched old habit to survive.

Old habits are not so easily dislodged! In practical terms, fresh new habits must be tended carefully and guarded from intruders. During their infancy and youth, good habits can be extinguished by a single episode of "Mañana, mañana--I don't wanna!" You have to cherish the new, good habit and fight the old bad one at the same time.

on the trail of good habits