Build rituals, not habits

Embrace the power of living and working with intention

Welcome to Insight Axis, where I make connections between practical philosophy, technology, books, science, and more.

This week we will explore why rituals are more powerful than habits.

This essay will cover:

• My inspiration for rituals

• Why rituals are more powerful than habits

• The power of ritualising technical work

• Debunking the idea that being intentional is effortful

My inspiration for rituals

I recently read

Charlene Storey

’s essay titled "Creating daily rituals to fill your cup", where she wrote about the joy of building beautiful rituals out of daily activities, and adding more "niceness" to life.

Her approach is different from the mainstream strategy of leaning into habitual behaviour, which has been popularised by several books (see Atomic Habits by James Clear and The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg). James Clear refers to a study claiming that 40 percent of our behaviours are habitual. When I read this statistic I thought "wow, I didn’t realise I live 40% of my life without being fully conscious…