The Snooze Button

In his book Excellent Advice for Life, Kevin Kelly writes: "Avoid hitting the snooze button. That's just training you to oversleep."

I love the advice because repeatedly doing something is the way to create a habit—positive or negative—and I had never thought about the snooze button that way.

Once acquired, a habit fires automatically when "triggered", without us consciously realizing it and with little energy expenditure. Positive habits give us freedom, the freedom to do easily the things we consider worthy. Negative habits enslave us because we cannot easily break from doing what we would rather avoid[^virtues].

[^virtues]: Classic philosophers called positive habits virtues, and negative ones vices.

We should think about what other areas of our lives we may be unconsciously hitting repeatedly a metaphorical snooze button. Without realizing it, we may be forging habits we'd rather not have.