I wanted to change my behavior of nail biting. I have always had a bad habit of nail biting, particularly during stressful activities. Aside from this being a habit I’ve been trying to break since I was little, I chose to monitor this activity because at the beginning of the second day, I went to get my nails done at a salon, and I know from past experience that having my nails done always helps to reduce my nail biting at least for a little while. Thus, I thought this would potentially lead to more interesting models. After measuring my nail biting for 2 days, I drew 2 models representing the habit ecosystem. First, a Connected Circle:
Green arrows represent positive effects, and red arrow represent negative effects. Not surprisingly, I identified some causal loops in my circle surrounding stress. Perhaps the simplest one: being stressed causes me to bite my nails, and when my nails are bitten off, I am stressed about my fingers hurting or my nails becoming unhealthy. These thoughts lead to a struggle to focus, leading me to bite my nails even more as a mechanism for staying focused–it’s my fidget spinner, pen twirling equivalent.
What was interesting about this experience is realizing how external factors that seem completely unrelated to nail biting can effect it. As mentioned previously, when I get my nails done, I don’t bite my nails as much. But having the ability to get my nails done depends on if I have some extra cash, which is dependent on how often I’ve been eating out or spending time off-campus with friends recently. If I’ve been spending a lot of money doing fun things (that usually reduce stress), ultimately I can’t get my nails done, which creates more stress.
I wanted to dive deeper into some of the more fundamental causes of my behavior. So I decided to create an Iceberg Model, using this website as inspiration:
This exercise allowed me to seek deeper, root causes to my behavior. I discovered that nail biting is rooted in my constant desire to produce seemingly perfect work, fueled by this phenomenon at Stanford where everyone feels like they have to balance tons of classes, a job, and friends, with ease. If I don’t strive for perfection, I feel lazy.
If I were to do this exercise again, I think it would be beneficial to measure the behavior over a longer period of time (e.g., a week) to have more factors to include in my models, and therefore identify more causal loops and root causes.
