Habit

Abstract

The thread of my argument is wound between two basic determinations of human life: that to survive we must both be able to adapt and yet also to spontaneously perform actions without thinking. Thus conceived, habit is a polar phenomenon, with ‘bad’ habits (mechanical repetition) at one pole and ‘good’ habits (informed choices) at the other. Far from considering habit as a mechanically repeated action, I maintain it is the form taken by embodied knowledge. Habit is what we perform, and the more we learn, the richer our performance. We are dealing with a form of knowing that is evidenced through expert performance rather than verbal discussion – in this sense, it is tacit.

The acquisition of tacit knowledge (the mastery of a skill) takes place in four stages: from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence, to conscious competence, to unconscious competence. Put another way, we begin by not knowing that we do not know, and upon realizing that we do not know, we embark on a course of learning during which time we know that we know, finally reaching a stage when we know more than we can tell.

The three sections of this article offer different routes into understanding the interrelation between habit, training and performance. The first deals with repetition and creation in actor training. This leads to a discussion of awareness, a crucially important faculty that characterizes the mental state of the performer in performance. A discussion of the neuroscientific literature reveals how perception, action and memory are functionally and intricately intertwined through sensori-motor loops. This faculty could be summed up in one word: noticing. All of this leads to the conclusion that habit can only be seen as negative if considered as a response or performance that is unchanging.