Dostoyevsky On The Habits We Accumulate

Fyodor Dostoyevsky (h/t James Clear) said, “It seems, in fact, as though the second half of a person’s life is made up of nothing but the habits they accumulated during the first half.”

This is only partly true. I know for me, and I’m sure for many of you reading this note, you figured out a bad habit or two from the first part of life and how to change it for the second part.

If you haven’t (or if you want to), let me tell you plainly – it can be done. It might be hard, but it can be done.

If you are trying to understand others (or better understand yourself), keep Dostoyevsky’s idea in mind. Because what people are doing today, is usually rooted in something they did yesterday, and the day before that, and the day before that, and the day before that, and… you get the idea.

Most of life is sensing some input and then running a program in response. If we want to vary the outcomes, we can’t change the input, but we can change the programs we run.