Think outside the box to break meaningless habits

Habits, ways of doing things, are often difficult to change. The routine becomes comfortable and we can settle in doing the same thing for a lifetime. As often occurs, we may lose the reason we began the routine in the first place, but the habit persists.

I'm reminded of the story of the new queen who came to the throne. Every day, as she went about her duties, she was aware that two soldiers stood guard, day after day, night after night, in the same spot. She couldn't figure out the reason that they stood guard as there was apparently nothing of value to be guarded. She finally discovered that a former queen had planted a rose bush in that spot 70 years earlier and commanded that it be guarded. Long after the bush was gone, the orders stood, and so did the guards.

Sometimes its beneficial to change the way we do things. For example, if we were asked to add up all of the numbers between 1 and 100, how would we generally go about it? Put in a column and add? Use a calculator? Through habit, we would probably add columns of numbers, and then add columns of sums, and so on. It would take us quite a while - and, it would be a boring experience. Habituated ways of doing things are often boring, tiring and inefficient.

Let's change the habit. If we were to add 1 plus 100, we would immediately discover that the result is 101. But, interestingly enough, 2 plus 99 equals 101; and 3 plus 98 equals 101. In all the numbers between 1 and 100, there are exactly 50 such pairs which add up to 101. So, by multiplying 50 times 101 we will have the correct answer (5,050.) By changing the habit, we find a method that is fast, efficient, and more fun than the traditional way to add numbers that we learned in elementary school.

As we try to solve various problems that confront us, we can easily use up enormous resources of time and energy and end up accomplishing very little.

But, if we take time to experiment, investigate and work "outside the box" we may often accomplish more than we had ever hoped.