The Clutter Fairy Weekly #65
Context and Cues: The Science of Habits and the Struggle with Clutter
Habits are a powerful force in our daily lives, and the study of habits has revealed surprising relationships between our thinking, our action, and our “context”—our location and circumstances. In episode #65 of The Clutter Fairy Weekly, Gayle Goddard, professional organizer and owner of The Clutter Fairy in Houston, Texas, explores interesting findings from the field of habit research and suggests ways to apply these ideas to our clutter challenges.
Sources and other links of interest about this week’s topic:
- Harnessing the power of habits
- Wendy Wood: Five myths about habits (This link is now behind a paywall, unfortunately. You might be able to read the same content at The Washington Post, if you haven’t read too many WaPo articles already.)
- Professor Wendy Wood on Twitter
- How to Keep Good Habits Post-Lockdown
- How to Form Good Habits? A Longitudinal Field Study on the Role of Self-Control in Habit Formation
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The Weekly Tittle is an exercise designed to focus your attention on a specific space, aspect, or challenge of decluttering and organizing your home. We assign a new tittle in each webcast/podcast, then check on your progress the following week.
Turn Over a New Leaf (or Take a Fresh Look at an Old One)
Since our main topic today was habits, our assignment is to identify a new habit that you’d like to cultivate, or to examine an old habit that you’d like to modify or eliminate:
- Identify a habit that you’d like to add, modify, or subtract from your routine. (No habit is too small for this assignment.)
For a new habit you’d like to cultivate:
- Think about what related actions or behaviors you’re already doing on a regular basis.
- Write down your intention to use the current behavior as the trigger for the new habit. For example, “When I start making a grocery list, I will scan the refrigerator for items that are ready to be purged.”
- Put the reminder in a place where you’ll be likely to see it when you’re doing the triggering behavior.
- Practice and adjust the new habit.
For a habit you’d like to modify or eliminate:
- Notice where, when, and under what circumstances do you do this habit? What action or pathway are you stuck in?
- Think about what triggers this habit. Examine the context.
- Consider how you might shift the triggering circumstances or related habits.
- Write down your intention to react differently (or not at all) to the trigger(s) you’ve identified.
- Practice making the shifts you’ve identified.
For the full discussion of this week’s tittle, watch the Weekly Tittle segment on YouTube.
Chat Transcript
Download a transcript of the chat that took place during the live event.
Note: For best results, we suggest you right-click (Windows) or control-click (Mac OS) the link above to download the chat transcript text file, then read it in your text-reader or word-processing app of choice. If you click the link directly, you may get quirky results viewing the text file in your browser.
