Habit changing is mental labor.
I’m in the middle of adjusting my daily writing time. For quite awhile, I’ve written at the end of the day, after the house quiets down. It has worked, but it no longer feels ideal. So I’m working hard to make room earlier in my day to write, in the hopes it will feel more sustainable and less frenzied at the very end of the day.
As I make this change, I’m reminded that the very act of changing a habit takes extra mental energy. The reason habits exist is to offload mental work, freeing our brain up for other tasks or non-tasks. Changing just the time of the habit makes it conscious again, and a little more tiring. Even though I know it’s temporary, it’s palpable.
Of course, teachers everywhere have just experienced this. The First-Week-Tired sensation that all teachers feel at the beginning of the school year is partially due to the habit change, and the mental expenditures that come with that. That’s a habit change that’s well worth it, and so are plenty of other habit changes.
If you want to change, remove, or add a habit, give yourself the mental space to make the change effectively, and know that it will cost mental energy.