What repeatedly changes what I do, whether I intended it or not?

A guided 20 to 30 minutes conversation, here in TAIU. Not a test of your willpower. The difference between something you choose repeatedly and something you repeatedly find yourself obeying.

A young woman standing still in a busy shared kitchen while other people move around her

If you decided not to do it tomorrow, what would actually happen?

Control becomes interesting when choice starts becoming negotiation.

Doing something often is not the same as being governed by it. Nothing needs changing is a legitimate result here.

What you'll look at

01Something you do more than you meant to
02What happened the last time you decided not to
03What is usually going on in the hour before
04What it actually costs you

A note from Mark

I am not very interested in whether somebody has a bad habit. Almost everybody does, and most of them are survivable.

What I am interested in is the moment where choosing turns into negotiating. You decide you are not going to do something, and then you find yourself making a case for why today is the exception. That argument is the useful evidence, because you only have it about things that have acquired a vote.

The other thing worth saying is that a lot of what people call control is not a psychological problem at all. It is a real obligation, or a job that expects something unreasonable, or a debt with a date on it. Telling somebody with a genuine constraint that they lack discipline is both wrong and cruel.

Read my full view ↓

And frequency proves very little. I know people who do something every single day and are entirely in charge of it, and people who do something once a month that has quietly organised their year.

Sometimes the conclusion is that you like it, it costs you nothing much and the only thing wrong was the guilt.

What you'll get

This will not sort you into a personality type.It will give you answers about your own life that you can test.

01
What actually has influence
02
Choice or obedience
03
What it costs you
04
What, if anything, to change
+
Your TAIU handover: a summary of what the conversation found, written so you can take it with you.

See everything included ↓

01What you came here with
02What the behaviour actually is
03The evidence for influence
04What comes immediately before it
05What it appears to do for you
06What it costs
07What choice remains
08How much control this actually has
09What appears to be driving it
10The rival explanation
11Where this may have come from
12What deserves protecting
13The credible alternative
14What, if anything, should change
15What remains unresolved
16Where this goes next

When you finish

Bring it back to your tree.

Your tree is where TAIU keeps a picture of your whole life, in parts like work, money and health.

This session works on the whole of you, not one part of your life. Nothing is scored. At the end, you are asked once which part of your life this touched most. You can answer none.

The conversation writes this summary for you. Keep the sheet, print it or paste it into My Tree. Nothing from the conversation is stored by TAIU.

Session
Date
The part of life this belongs to
What we found
The alternative we tested
What deserves protecting
What should change, if anything
Next actions
What to notice or find out
What remains unresolved

Open My Tree

What now?

01 · Save it
The behaviour described concretely rather than as a category.
02 · Test it
Change one condition rather than the behaviour, for a week and see what happens. Move the thing, change the hour or take a different route home.

See more ↓

If this turned out to be bigger than an exercise

There is a point at which reflection is the wrong instrument. If the honest finding is that you have stopped being able to choose, or that somebody else is controlling your money, movement or contact with other people, the useful next step is a person rather than a page.

That is not a failure of the exercise. Knowing which kind of problem you have is most of the work.

What I would do

01
Start with a specific occasion rather than a category. Categories produce confession, and occasions produce evidence.
02
Separate frequency from influence. A lot of something you have chosen is not the same as a little of something you cannot stop.
03
Look hard at the hour before, because that is usually where the decision was actually made.
04
Check whether the constraint is external before concluding anything about your character. Quite often the honest finding is that a real obligation is doing the work.
05
Ask what removing it would expose. If the answer is nothing, this may be smaller than you think.

Test it

01
Decide in advance what tomorrow looks like without it, and notice whether you spend the day negotiating.
02
Ask what you would do with the time, money or attention if it disappeared. A blank answer is worth more attention than a guilty one.
03
Name the last occasion it cost you something specific. If you cannot, the case for control is weaker than it felt.

The alternative

The obvious conclusion is that you have a willpower problem and should cut down. It is usually wrong twice over. The first correction is that a great deal of what looks like control is a real constraint wearing a psychological costume: an employer who expects availability, a debt with a date on it, a family that needs something from you. The second is that the conditions do far more work than the character. Change what precedes a behaviour and the behaviour often moves without any struggle at all. And sometimes the finding is simply that you enjoy something, it costs you nothing you mind paying and the only problem was that you had been told to feel bad about it.

Think about this

Something you have recently done more of than you intended.
The last time you decided not to, and what actually happened.
What is usually true in the hour beforehand.
What you expect it to give you, and whether it does.
What would be exposed if it were taken away tomorrow.

Take this to Ask Mark

You have done the exercise. Now look again at what it found.

This looks at what you found and helps you understand it. It is not another exercise to repeat.

Take this to Ask Mark →

Want to go further?

READ · GUIDE

Information and support

Mind

Reliable, and specific about what to say when you make the appointment.

Good Habits, Bad Habits

Wendy Wood

Read it if the exercise found you repeatedly doing something you did not decide to do. It moves the problem from your willpower to your surroundings, which is where it can actually be changed.

Identity-based habits

James Clear

Best for seeing why repeated action is better evidence than self-description.

Recommended by the TAIU community

What helped you?

If you've read, watched, listened to or tried something that helped you think about this differently, we'd like to hear about it.

We review recommendations before sharing them with the community.

Finished the exercise?

What did this uncover?

Tell us whether it helped and what you discovered. It takes less than a minute.

A young man standing on a crowded city bus at rush hour, headphones round his neck and a phone held face down, glancing at something outside the frame while a friend talks behind him

Next tool

Where does my attention actually go?

If the finding was about conditions rather than character

Continue →What does not need fixing? →

Further thinking

Good Habits, Bad Habits
Wendy Wood
Wanting is not liking
Kent Berridge and Terry Robinson
Generalized Expectancies for Internal Versus External Control of Reinforcement
Julian B. Rotter

See the thinking ↓

Book

Good Habits, Bad Habits

Wendy Wood

Wood spent three decades measuring what people actually do rather than what they intend, and her finding is uncomfortable: roughly forty three per cent of daily behaviour is repeated in the same context with almost no decision involved. That reframes the question. Something with a hold on you is usually not a failure of character, it is a piece of your environment doing reliable work.

Article

Wanting is not liking

Kent Berridge and Terry Robinson

Berridge separated two systems that everyday language treats as one. Wanting, the pull towards something and liking, the pleasure of having it, run on different machinery and can come apart completely. It is the cleanest explanation of a very common report: I do not even enjoy it any more, and I still do it. Useful precisely because it does not require the word addiction.

Article

Generalized Expectancies for Internal Versus External Control of Reinforcement

Julian B. Rotter

Rotter's monograph is where the internal and external control idea comes from, and it is more careful than the pop version. An internal orientation predicts persistence and initiative, but it also carries a cost when someone applies it to outcomes nobody could have controlled, which is where responsibility turns into self blame.

Article

Identity-based habits

James Clear

A short piece with one idea in it: every action is a small vote for the kind of person you believe you are, and the tally is more honest than the label. It is the clearest statement of the assumption this exercise runs on, which is that what you did tells you more than what you would say.

Book

Why We Do What We Do

Edward L. Deci with Richard Flaste

The readable account of self-determination theory, written by the man who spent forty years testing it. The finding that matters here is that rewards and approval reliably change why people do things, and that behaviour which survives without either is telling you something the rest is not. It gives you a usable test rather than a feeling.