Welcome to Inhabit
A weekly newsletter for habit exploration
It’s 7:30 am. I scarf down a breakfast of eggs, spinach, and tempeh while nursing my baby. I steal a quick glance at the clock before downing a few supplements. In 15 minutes, I’ll run down the stairs, racing to the gym before work.
If the scene feels frenetic, it’s because it is. But also: because I feel a sense of urgency. It’s the fleeting, magical feeling that I’ve hit on a formula, or at least one that works for me, for now. My energy levels are better. I’m not waking up exhausted. My interactions with my husband are (almost) entirely positive. Later that day, as I’m driving my kids back from a doctor’s appointment, one of them will start screaming and basically not stop. As I recount to my husband later: the screaming didn’t drive me crazy. Can you believe it?
We see articles every day about something new we should be doing with our lives. A new way we should close our mouths while sleeping. Or how that’s actually TikTok pseudo-science. Why coffee is the reason we’ll become super-agers. Or why caffeine will absolutely destroy us. I should know: I read these articles every day. For six and a half years I wrote, edited, then managed the Daily Skimm—a newsletter reaching millions of readers. Today I do the same for 1440, a newsletter reaching millions more.
I’ve earned a special niche in my community of friends and family. How do I put this…I do not shut up about things. As a mom of three, I leave my work at the end of the day and can’t help but wonder whether the things I’ve just learned have the capacity to impact the tiny humans in my care. How the habits we establish now, or should have established years earlier, shape us for years to come.
The scaffolding of our lives is made up of our unconscious routines. These habits become us. By one estimate, more than 40% of our day is on autopilot. And yet, for all the one-off articles a family member will send on WhatsApp, we are not selective and intentional about choosing habits.
As a skill, habit picking should be more valued than knowing how to select wine or furniture. It is a high-effort, high-expense undertaking and may be as important as exploring who to marry, where to live, or that age-old question we unfairly pose to kids: what do you want to be when you grow up?
But also: habit hunting can be fun. It allows us to expand the imagination of what we are, who we might become. It sparks our curiosity and our sense of optimism. It can engage every human sense—taste, smell, sight, sound, and touch.
I started Inhabit because I wanted to do what I do best: collect the research I’ve found, distill it, and communicate what people need to know to make better decisions. I wanted to translate real-life research into the nitty gritty: how much does a habit cost? Is it feasible to integrate into your existing routine? If you’ve got five minutes before bed, should you meditate or read?
These decisions may seem small on the margins but when you add them all up, they may be the most significant decisions we have the privilege to make.
So welcome. Each week, I’ll get into one habit-related idea and the exercises that extend from it. Sometimes we’ll get into how much a habit will cost you upfront and in daily maintenance fees. And whether cold plunges will (or won’t) change your life.
Other times, we’ll get into how habits can enable (or prevent) quality time. And how to think about the habits that lead to flourishing relationships.
All of these habits will live on the Inhabit website, where you can shop for—and rate—habits you want to consider integrating your life.
It’s time to get in habit… and inhabit a better vision for how we’ll live our lives. (Can you tell I wrote puns for a living?)
Let’s do this.
Yours in habit,
Julie
PS: If you’re looking for which posts to check out first, check out some of the most popular pieces to date:
The Threshold: a theory on marriage and that habits that can support (or undermine) it
The 5 Stages: an evidence-based model for how people adopt positive behavior change, backed by decades of research
Quality Time: an equation for quality time, and the two resources that are required for deep connection
The Zone: examining the question-related habits that foster fascinating conversations
So excited for this!