design for shaking the habitual

17 Aug, 2026

No habits!
There are other ways to do things.¹

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Hosting the Listening Hour yesterday I saw something that I've noticed a few times recently, in various settings. What I'm seeing as a common tendency to perform or respond in line with what we expect, rather than what is actually being asked.

The check-out question for the session was:

What needs have you identified (through today's session)?

As co-host Ceri explained the prompt, it's about naming what needs have surfaced during the practice. (Focusing on universal needs, and how they show up in our lives and others' lives, is an essential part of NVC practices)

There are 8+ active co-hosts for the Listening Hour, any two of whom hold the space on a weekly basis. We use a variety of check-out questions. Another common check-out question is:

What needs were met for you (in today's session)?

At least one person yesterday responded by naming needs that had been met for them. But the invitation was to reflect, not on needs met, but live needs yet to be attended to. I'm not saying this to point out people "getting it wrong" as some moral judgement. I'm interested in what's going on here, the social (communication) and psychological processes at play.

So: what's going on here? They're similar questions so confusion is easy to understand. The "needs met" question is more common in my experience of the Listening Hour. It's the end of the session: people can be tired. Distracted. Preoccupied by what was shared; what it brought up for them; or in anticipating what they're doing in 10 minutes when the session ends. In other words, not present, not fully attentive.

And I wonder if there is something else, some kind of difficulty breaking out of the well-worn grooves of habitual behaviours.

Perhaps ... we are always responding to some internally simulated version of reality "out there" ... through the filters of our position and experience. Most of the time we get by alright and this is approximately adequate. But in moments like this it gets exposed?²

It's like when you're not really listening to a friend's response to your question "how are you?"... and get caught out when saying "oh that's great!" is a totally inappropriate response to their bad news.

Ultimately it seems to relate to presence and connection. And connection that facilites -- or hinders -- understanding and shared reality. If I get a sense you're just responding to a script and not really "here", I don't feel connected to you. I start thinking about what's happened in the interaction, in what I'm doing and what you're bringing with you, to get to this point; whether it's desirable and viable to try and interrupt this by naming what's going on.

In the moment, one technique for shaking the habitual is the core facilitator skill of Naming (naming an observed dynamic) as a key technique for "shaking the habitual".³ IF it serves the purpose of the interaction.

But how can we anticipate this, design for this? When we're working on building awareness or systems change, it's surely important for "shaking the habitual" to be a design principle.

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Now we have to start. We choose process over everything else.
Letting go of outcomes is another privilege.
Keep it lateral.
We ask our friends to help.¹