I recently read a piece by Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, about the release of ChatGPT-5. What struck me was his reasoning for making the update widely available to all users, not just paid subscribers:
“Use becomes habit. Habit becomes infrastructure.”
That idea stuck with me.
This week, on the coaching calls, we’ve been discussing disrupting patterns and old ways of being.
Which brought me back to patterns of behavior as habits. These patterns of behavior become the infrastructure of how we behave even when we aren’t consciously aware of them. It takes a lot of intentionality to change.
First, you notice the pattern. Then you decide to change it. Then you catch yourself in the moment, again and again, and redirect.
That’s why I keep coming back to Hoffman’s line. We have agency. Habits can be rewired. Infrastructure can be rebuilt.
Our aim with mindful accountability is first and foremost to bring awareness to the choices that you are making. So much of what we do out of habit is subconscious. For instance, you might snap at your partner or child after a stressful day. It feels like it comes out of nowhere, but really it’s a well-worn pattern: when you’re stressed, you are short-tempered, and you take it out on others. Once you see the pattern, you can make a new choice. Pause, breathe, and respond differently. Take a walk around the block. And soon the pattern of snapping is transformed.
Or think about how often you pick up your phone without realizing it. This too is a habit that becomes the infrastructure of distraction. Awareness is often high, but deciding how to address it is where I see people struggle. Still, small shifts can have big impact. You can put your phone away, silence it, remove notifications, and rebuild your attention and ability to focus.
Now is a great time to make changes, since routines are shifting anyway. As we move away from the slowness of summer and the calendar becomes busier, it’s the habits and routines we decide to put in place that will serve us.
Every habit we change, discard, or replace with a better habit is a brick in the new infrastructure we are building.
