loops and loops and loops and loops and loops and loops and loops and loops and loops and loops and loops and loops and loops and loops and loops and
We all live in loops. There's the obvious examples: the seasons, day following night. The planet you live in is traveling in a loop in space, which causes the time loops you live in. We wake up every morning, we go to bed every night. We experience summer, fall, winter, and spring every year.
Loops frame our existence, so it's no wonder they're so common in our culture. There's the standard verse-chorus-verse song structure, or the comforting way most TV shows and movies bring characters back to their familiar patterns at the end of the hero's journey. We all live in loops, so loops are what make sense to use in art.
Advertisers understand this, which is why they air the same ad again and again and again and again. It's not just to torture you, it's also to get your brain into a loop, to cut through the clutter. Some of the oldest print advertisements just repeated the same line, again and again, until the entire page was full. This was meant to be eye catching, and it worked. The infamous berries and cream Starburst ad is essentially this same idea in video form.
Speaking of: memes are also loops. They are, at their heart, about repetition. Every slight variation on the same image macro, phrase, or video clip makes the meme just a little more popular, which leads to more variations on it, which makes the meme just a little more popular, which leads to more variations. A truly insidious ad can become a meme (hello again Starburst.)
We all live in loops, and loops are powerful. Understanding this is the key to building good habits.
It's all about noticing the loops you're struck in, then making small changes to those them. For example: when my dentist told me I needed to start brushing twice a day, I thought about my morning routine and tried to think about where to insert brushing my teeth. I went with after I'm done drinking my coffee. I intentionally inserted this at that point in my daily loop, and after a while I hated how my breath tasted if I didn't brush after finishing my coffee.
You can use this general principal to build any habit. Think of something you want to do regularly, then think about the loops you're living in. At what point can you successfully insert the habit? Ideally there should be some sort of trigger that already exists in your day. Or, if you have a bad habit, think about what daily occurrences might trigger that habit.
This is a framework that's proven very helpful for me. I hope it's helpful for you too. We're all going to be stuck in loops, no matter what—you might as well try to design loops you enjoy.
More loops
- On The Days I Am Not My Father by Scott Owens
- Loops, the best episode of Radiolab
- Season one of Westworld is a great meditation on loops, even if that show utterly fails to live up to that standard later on. The soundtrack is pretty good, though.
Stuff I wrote
- 7 things Safari does that Chrome can't PopSci It's so easy to forget anything else but Chrome exists, which is a shame because other browsers are getting a lot better.
- How to use markdown in Google Docs Wired I live and think in markdown, so this feature is going to make my life a lot easier. Hopefully it makes your life better too.
Stuff I did
- Read The Overstory by Richard Powers, a profoundly beautiful book about trees and the people who live around them. It really makes you think about time in a different way.
- Listened a classical piano concert in a desert canyon, which was such a beautiful experience. Hunter Noack, the artist, does shows in parks all over the northwest, check it out: In A Landscape
- The Oberon clone turned out nicely! Stop by sometime if you want to try it.
- Mira spent Portland's heat wave attempting to maximize the amount of cool air her body was exposed to.
See you all next week! Feel free to send me your favorite loops.