Habits: Good, bad, and indifferent

As promised, I posted my first letter yesterday.

It was to Amazon. At this point I am only going to post them on Facebook, but if you have questions or want to see any, that can be arranged.

In writing it and drafting the one to Google, I was struck by the power of habit.

I haven't thought of Amazon as a particularly ethical company ever, but I didn't stop using them until Bezos kept the Washington Post from endorsing Harris.

Google used to be great, but their search result quality had been going downhill for a while. 

I found that frustrating, but I didn't actually stop using them until they starting displaying the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.

I have actually started doing my searches in a different browser because changing the Firefox automation was more effort than using Microsoft Edge for Bing searches and Firefox for everything else.

Yes, Microsoft is not a great company, and I am sure there is a way I could change the settings and keep doing everything in Firefox. In fact, I am going to try checking out some other search engines to see if anything works better. I know what a good search engine was like, and it was great.

The point is that we easily keep doing the same thing, choosing the path of least resistance, even when we might be happier changing.

Breaking those habits takes conscious effort.

I mention that because I have been meaning to write about things that are going to be harder asks. The potential action items in February were not that disruptive.

One of the things was going to be about reconsidering your 401K, like maybe contributing less to it. Today there is buzz about the stock market crash sinking the value; should I have written that one earlier?

If people were going to read it and decide to cash out their 401K, they may wish they had done that sooner.

There are also reasons for people to not trust my financial expertise, but I might still have some points.

I am going to write things that will sound pretty non-conformist. They can lead to actions, but I am not sure that I will even put potential action items in them. You should draw your own conclusions.

The topics covered are going to be more complex, so any application is going to be very personal. 

However -- before making any decisions, including writing the whole post off -- it's a good idea to think about why you are doing something the way you do it, and whether that makes sense for you.