Yesterday, my son and I put the Christmas lights up on the house. The weather was great, and it went pretty quick. I also cleaned out the gutters while I was up on the roof.
I do it every year.
But it’s not a habit. Maybe a tradition.
Habits are things you do habitually. So they are done at least once a week.
If you don’t do something every week, or even better, every day, then it’s not a habit. Full stop.
Even if you’ve done it for decades. At that point, you can definitely call it a tradition.
The only reason this matters is that you’ll treat habits and traditions differently when you plan out your day, or your year.
A tradition like putting up the Christmas lights takes a decent amount of time.
Habits are at their best when they take at most an hour. Any more and it’s just hard to make it happen on a daily, or even weekly basis.
Because life is full of things that aren’t habits. That need to be done. That take time.
Some of those are traditions, like putting up the Christmas lights. It took a few hours. It took some planning, since there are always lights to be replaced, strings that go out, or small changes you want to make.
Habits can support traditions. My daily planning habit makes it easy to remember, plan for, and set aside time to do the important traditions in my life, whether they are personal or family traditions.
On the other hand, not only should individual habits not take too much time, but the sum of all your habits can’t be too cumbersome.
I admit that at times I’ve considered filling my life with habits. If I have habits for all the areas of my life, and they let me get stuff done each day, then “voila!”, I just go on autopilot.
But alas, life is not like that.
And we wouldn’t want it to be. Habits are great for a few key things.
But for the rest, we want some variety, some big projects, some down time, some occasional traditions, some spontaneity.
And so.
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.