A Habit I Dropped Without Regret, and Seven Questions to Write About It

"Right, not today."

"Skip enough days and you've quit."

"Then I've quit."

Sunday, I stood in front of the bookshelf holding the fifth notebook, blue cover with a bicycle on it, last page still blank. Five squared-paper notebooks, three pages every morning, eight months straight, starting at twenty to six before I left for my tutoring rounds. Three weeks ago I stopped.

I am thirty-six, I tutor maths in the late afternoon and evening at students' homes, riding my motorbike from one district to the next with a bag of books pressing on my shoulder. Those three pages each morning were where I kept one small patch of quiet for myself. What I had not expected was that the hardest part would not be stopping. It would be the guilt that followed, as if I had dropped something people trusted me to hold.

This is seven questions for writing about a habit you have stopped, and feel lighter for more than you feel sorry. Not to decide whether you go back. Only to see it clearly.

It is not an article encouraging you to drop habits. It is not an excuse for being lazy either: some things deserve to be kept, and only you know which. And it is certainly not a courtroom. The seven questions below are not there to rule on whether you were right or wrong to stop. They are a page where you can say the true thing.

Why does dropping a habit feel like letting down something you no longer want to do?

Three weeks without

Friday evening, the pavement café at the top of the street, my glass of iced milk coffee nearly all melted. Hưng, my friend, sat across from me, leaning back in his plastic chair, and asked.

"Still writing every morning?"

"Stopped three weeks ago."

"Oh. So how does it feel?"

"Lighter. And a bit guilty too."

Hưng nodded and said nothing more, and I was grateful for the nothing.

The easy explanation is that I feel guilty because I gave up, or because I am lazy. It sounds reasonable, and anyone could say it. But I am not lazy: in those same weeks I was still getting up at six to make a new Saturday class that starts at half past six.

The guilt lives somewhere else. It comes from a promise I made to the version of myself from eight months ago, someone who knew nothing about my life today. Back then I promised three pages every morning, before I had taken on any class at half past six. The person who made the promise is not here to listen when it needs changing. Keeping a promise to that person is, often enough, a refusal to listen to the one who is actually living. And stopping is also a decision. It just has no title, so we are used to calling it failure.

If you also have something you have stopped and it still snags, there is another piece that sits close to this spot: permitting yourself to rest without guilt.

Ten minutes before the questions

Before going into the seven questions, I tried one small thing to see what I was really thinking.

How you know you did it right: reading it the next day, you find one detail you did not see while thinking in your head. A time of day, a name, a smell.

The first time I wrote five lines and got stuck, and ten minutes became ten minutes of staring at the paper. Perfectly normal. After about a week, the opening "I have stopped…" started to flow more easily, and one day I ran over time without noticing. But some people only get a few lines all week, and those few lines are still enough.

On a busy day, shrink it to three minutes: one sentence beginning "I have stopped…" and one beginning "because…". Two sentences, then fold the page.

The place this slips most easily is writing a verdict. Either listing reasons so you win the argument, or the reverse, hunting for proof that you are hopeless. It is tempting because my head is used to arguing, and both kinds are quick to write. But a verdict tells no one anything new. Instead, just describe: the last day I did it, where I sat, what was in my hand, what sounds came through the window.

Seven questions, from light to deep

One question each evening

I wrote these seven in seven evenings, at the dining table after washing up, next to a glass of iced tea. At first I meant to do the whole set in one go. Luckily I did not.

Which habit, exactly, have you stopped?

Write its name so that a stranger would understand it, and note when you last did it and where.

When you started, who or what was it for?

Maybe a book, a friend, a compliment, or just seeing everyone else do it. Write the real reason, even if it is not a pretty one.

What did it do for you, even if only for a few weeks?

This is the question for saying thank you to an old habit, not for defending the decision to drop it. It might only have been a moment of quiet.

Mine: those first three pages each morning gave me a stretch of sitting with nobody calling. For eight months, twenty to six was the one hour of the day with no messages from students' parents. If you would like another piece for writing thanks, there are seven questions to write a thank-you to yourself.

Was there a moment when you realised it no longer fit?

Sometimes it is just a morning when you wake up and do not want to pick up the pen. Write that exact morning: what the weather was, what was in your hand.

Now that it is gone, what is filling the gap?

Maybe fifteen extra minutes of sleep, another task, or nothing yet. "Nothing yet" is a perfectly valid answer.

Which part of it do you still want to keep, even if it is too small for anyone to call a habit?

Just write it down, with no plan for what to do with it.

Mine: I stopped the three pages but I still note down one line on my phone when something odd happens in the day. One line. Some days there is none, and that is fine.

Is there another habit you are keeping only because you are afraid of being seen to quit?

This one is heavier than the others. If you feel tired by the time you reach it, leave it until tomorrow.

The order is not random. The first two questions only ask for facts, so anyone can answer them. The third is odd, because it asks you to thank something you have dropped, and many people stall here. I stalled too: on the third evening I sat looking at my iced tea for twenty minutes before I wrote the first line. The stall has a reason. Dropping means criticising, thanking means keeping, and the two ways of thinking keep closing doors on each other. Once I could write both, that it had helped me and I no longer needed it, I felt much lighter. The last question turns away from the habit I dropped to look at the ones I am holding, because sometimes the lesson lives there rather than in what I stopped.

How you know you did it right: you write at least one sentence you did not plan to write when you picked up the pen. The first time, I found the second question easier than I expected and the third harder: writing thanks to something I had dropped sounded like a contradiction. After seven evenings I noticed I said "I quit" in an apologetic voice a little less than before. Some people finish the seven evenings and still feel unsure about everything, and that is valid too: some answers take longer than a week to arrive.

On a busy day, pick just question three or question six and write for three minutes, since those two are the smallest and still reach the middle.

Where I nearly went wrong was answering the way I thought I should. For the second question I was about to write "because I wanted a more disciplined life", which sounds good and sounds like a book. But the real reason was that I had just seen an acquaintance post a photo of their journal. It was tempting because a good sentence is easier to write than a true one. Instead I wrote the embarrassing reason, and the page felt lighter.

If you wrote and it felt empty, or heavy

I will be straight about two things that happen often.

First: you wrote and it felt empty. Perhaps the habit you picked is too big or too blurry, something like "a healthy lifestyle", with nothing to describe. Pick a smaller thing: a glass of water, a lesson, one step out of the door. Or perhaps it is simply not time yet, and leaving the page untouched for a week is also a way. Some people need to talk to themselves in a friend's voice before they can write anything real, and learning to talk to yourself like a best friend might help a little.

Second: you finished and it felt heavy. Maybe every answer keeps turning into blaming yourself, and if so, stop, do not force the seven. Or perhaps the habit was tied to a person, or to a hard stretch of your life, and stopping it pulled up something bigger than a habit. If the heaviness stays for several days, or sadness or tiredness drags on for weeks without easing, talk with a friend you trust or with a qualified professional. This article is only a sheet of paper and cannot replace that.

Tonight, if there is something you stopped and still think about, try writing one line about it.

The fifth notebook is still on the shelf. I have not thrown it away and I have not reopened it. Some things are allowed to just sit there.