A little over a year ago, I wrote a post called Are You Running on an Outdated Operating System?

The idea came to me after noticing that my physical strength wasn’t what it used to be. I compared ourselves to computers. Our beliefs, habits and routines may have worked perfectly well years ago, but eventually some of them become outdated. Perhaps, like an operating system, they need an update.

I still like the question behind that post.

But recently I started wondering whether I was looking in the wrong place.

When something that used to work no longer does, why do I immediately assume that I need updating?

Maybe the first question should be much simpler:

What changed?

Our habits don’t exist in isolation

I tend to think of a habit as something I possess.

I have a habit of exercising.

I have a particular morning routine.

I write regularly.

I go outside.

If I stop doing one of those things, it is easy to interpret that as something changing inside me. Maybe I lost motivation. Maybe I became less disciplined.

But psychologists studying habits have found that our surroundings play an important role too.

In one study, researchers followed university students who transferred to another university. They looked at everyday habits such as exercising, reading the newspaper and watching television. Habits were more likely to continue when the circumstances surrounding them remained similar. When important parts of the environment changed, the old habits were more likely to be disrupted.

Researchers call this habit discontinuity.

A habit isn’t maintained by willpower alone. Places, situations and recurring cues can quietly make a behavior easier to repeat.

Change those conditions and the behavior may change with them.

That made me think about my own life.

I changed countries

Moving from the Netherlands to Japan changed almost everything around me.

The climate changed.

The language changed.

Transportation changed.

My surroundings changed.

My daily responsibilities changed.

Things that had once been easy became difficult, while things I had rarely considered suddenly became possible.

Gardening is a good example.

I didn’t move to Japan because I wanted to become a gardener. There was simply a garden outside my new home.

I started working in it.

Then I started noticing things.

Plants grew where I hadn’t planted them. Trees I thought were dying recovered. Vegetables behaved differently from what I expected. Seasons changed what needed my attention.

The environment presented me with something, I responded to it, and my response changed the environment again.

Over time, gardening became part of my life.

Did I change?

Of course.

But Japan changed the conditions in which I was living, and I changed in response to those conditions.

The relationship worked both ways.

Financial independence changed the environment too

The same thing happened when I became financially independent.

For most of my working life, an employer provided a large amount of structure.

There were working hours.

Weekends.

Holidays.

Deadlines.

Expectations.

A distinction between working time and free time.

Once much of that disappeared, I had far more control over my own time.

That was exactly what I had worked toward.

But removing an external structure also meant I had to decide what should replace it.

What should I do today?

Do I need a routine?

How do I know when I’ve done enough?

What does a successful day look like when nobody else is measuring it?

At first glance, those questions can look like personal problems requiring better discipline.

But perhaps something more basic happened.

The conditions changed.

A structure that had organized much of my life disappeared.

Naturally, I had to learn how to live under different conditions.

A changing body isn’t an outdated body

This brings me back to the observation that started my original post.

I had noticed that my physical strength wasn’t what it used to be.

The operating-system metaphor made sense at the time. My old settings no longer fitted. I needed an update.

But I don’t think I would describe it that way now.

A body at fifty isn’t an outdated version of a body at thirty.

It is a body under different conditions.

Psychologists studying development across adulthood have described adaptation through processes such as selection, optimization and compensation.

Sometimes we choose more carefully where to put our limited resources.

Sometimes we work to maintain or improve an ability.

And sometimes we find another way of doing something when the old way no longer works as well.

That isn’t necessarily decline followed by repair.

It is adaptation.

I don’t have to reproduce what I could do twenty years ago in exactly the same way.

I can look at what is possible now and respond accordingly.

Old doesn’t necessarily mean obsolete

There is something amusing about revisiting my old computer metaphor now.

Recently, I investigated why we replace things that still work.

My iPhone 11 was old by smartphone standards, but it hadn’t suddenly stopped being a functioning phone because newer models existed.

Age wasn’t really the question.

The better question was whether what the phone could provide still fitted what I needed from it.

Eventually my needs and circumstances changed enough for replacing it to make sense.

Perhaps habits, routines and even some beliefs deserve the same consideration.

Something isn’t necessarily obsolete simply because I’ve been doing it for a long time.

An old routine may still work perfectly well.

An old skill may become useful again.

A summer routine may not work in winter and return the following summer.

Something can stop fitting without becoming bad.

The question isn’t always:

Is this outdated?

It may be:

Does this still fit the conditions in which I’m trying to use it?

Sometimes I really do need to change

None of this means the problem is always the environment.

Sometimes I learn something that proves an old belief wrong.

Sometimes a habit really is no longer helpful.

Sometimes my priorities change.

Sometimes I repeatedly encounter the same problem under completely different circumstances, and eventually I have to look at myself.

But even then, I think there is value in resisting the urge to fix myself before understanding the problem.

When something that used to work stops working, several things may have happened.

I changed.

My circumstances changed.

Both changed.

Or perhaps the mismatch had been there for a long time and I only just noticed it.

Only after understanding that can I decide what to do about it.

Maybe I need to change myself.

Maybe I need to change my surroundings.

Maybe I need another method.

Maybe I need to change the goal.

Maybe I simply need to accept that this is a different season.

What changed?

I still like my old operating-system metaphor.

It made me notice something important: ways of living that once served us don’t necessarily continue doing so forever.

I just don’t think updating myself is always the right response anymore.

People aren’t computers.

We live in environments that are constantly changing, and we change those environments in return.

Our bodies change.

Our circumstances change.

Our priorities change.

What is possible changes.

And sometimes nothing is actually broken.

Something that fitted my life then simply doesn’t fit my life now.

So the next time something that used to work no longer does, I don’t want to immediately assume that I’ve become outdated, undisciplined or in need of an upgrade.

Before trying to fix anything, I want to look a little closer.

What changed?