As I struggled to find a name for this framework, one of my favorite passages, from Sigmund Freud’s “The Theme of the Three Caskets,” popped into my head. Freud explains that the names of the three goddesses of fate mean “the accidental within the decrees of destiny,” “the inevitable,” and “the fateful tendencies each one of us brings into the world.” The fateful tendencies each one of us brings into the world.
I decided to name my framework the “Four Tendencies.” (The “Four Fateful Tendencies,” though accurate, sounded a little melodramatic.)
As I developed the framework of the Four Tendencies, I truly felt as though I were discovering the Periodic Table of the Elements—the elements of character. I wasn’t making up a system; I was uncovering a law of nature. Or perhaps I’d created a habits Sorting Hat.
Our Tendency colors the way we see the world and therefore has enormous consequences for our habits. Of course, these are tendencies, but I’ve found, to a degree that surprises me, that most people do fall squarely into one camp, and once I identified the Tendencies, I got a kick from hearing the people within a given Tendency make the same kinds of comments, over and over. Questioners, for example, often remark on how much they hate to wait in line.
Upholders
Upholders respond readily to outer expectations and inner expectations. They wake up and think: “What’s on the schedule and the to-do list for today?” They want to know what’s expected of them, and to meet those expectations. They avoid making mistakes or letting people down—including themselves.
Others can rely on Upholders, and Upholders can rely on themselves. They’re self-directed and have little trouble meeting commitments, keeping resolutions, or meeting deadlines (they often finish early). They want to understand the rules, and often they search for the rules beyond the rules—as in the case of art or ethics.
One friend with an Upholder wife told me, “If something is on the schedule, my wife is going to do it. When we were in Thailand, we’d planned to visit a certain temple, and we went—even though she got food poisoning the night before and was throwing up on our way there.”
Because Upholders feel a real obligation to meet their expectations for themselves, they have a strong instinct for self-preservation, and this helps protect them from their tendency to meet others’ expectations. “I need a lot of time for myself,” an Upholder friend told me, “to exercise, to kick around new ideas for work, to listen to music. If people ask me to do things that interfere, it’s easy for me to tell them ‘no.’ ”
However, Upholders may struggle in situations where expectations aren’t clear or the rules aren’t established. They may feel compelled to meet expectations, even ones that seem pointless. They may feel uneasy when they know they’re breaking the rules, even unnecessary rules, unless they work out a powerful justification to do so.
This is my Tendency. I’m an Upholder.
My Upholder Tendency sometimes makes me overly concerned with following the rules. Years ago, when I pulled out my laptop to work in a coffee shop, the barista told me, “You can’t use a laptop in here.” Now every time I go to a new coffee shop, I worry about whether I can use my laptop.
There’s a relentless quality to Upholders, too. I’m sure it’s tiresome for Jamie—sometimes, it’s even tiresome for me—to hear my alarm go off every morning at 6:00. I have an Upholder friend who estimates that she skips going to the gym only about six times a year.
“How does your family feel about that?” I asked.
“Well, my husband used to complain. Now he’s used to it.”
Although I love being an Upholder, I see its dark side, too—the gold star seeking, the hoop jumping, the sometimes mindless rule following.
When I figured out that I was an Upholder, I understood why I’d been drawn to the study of habits. We Upholders find it relatively easy to cultivate habits—it’s not easy, but it’s easier than for many other people—and we embrace them because we find them gratifying. But the fact that even habit-loving Upholders must struggle to foster good habits shows how challenging it is to form habits.
Questioners
Questioners question all expectations, and they respond to an expectation only if they conclude that it makes sense. They’re motivated by reason, logic, and fairness. They wake up and think, “What needs to get done today, and why?” They decide for themselves whether a course of action is a good idea, and they resist doing anything that seems to lack sound purpose. Essentially, they turn all expectations into inner expectations. As one Questioner wrote on my blog: “I refuse to follow arbitrary rules (I jaywalk, as long as there are no cars coming, and I’ll go through a red light if it’s the middle of the night, and there’s no other traffic in sight) but rules that I find based in morality/ethics/reason are very compelling.”
A friend said, “Why don’t I take my vitamins? My doctor tells me I should, but usually I don’t.”
She’s a Questioner, so I asked, “Do you believe that you need to take vitamins?”
“Well, no,” she answered, after a pause, “as a matter of fact, I don’t.”
“I bet you’d take them if you thought they mattered.”
Questioners resist rules for rules’ sake. A reader posted on my blog: “My son’s school principal said that kids were expected to tuck in their shirts. When I expressed surprise at this seemingly arbitrary rule, the principal said that the school had many rules just for the sake of teaching children to follow rules. That’s a dumb reason to ask anyone, including children, to follow a rule. If we know of such rules we should seek and destroy them, to make the world a better place.”
Because Questioners like to make well-considered decisions and come to their own conclusions, they’re very intellectually engaged, and they’re often willing to do exhaustive research. If they decide there’s sufficient basis for an expectation, they’ll follow it; if not, they won’t. Another Questioner said, “My wife is annoyed with me, because she really wants us both to track our spending. But we’re not in debt, we spend within our means, so I don’t think that getting that information is worth the hassle. So I won’t do it.”
Questioners resist anything that seems arbitrary; for instance, Questioners often remark, “I can keep a resolution if I think it’s important, but I wouldn’t make a New Year’s resolution, because January first is a meaningless date.”
At times, the Questioner’s appetite for information and justification can become overwhelming. “My mother makes me insane,” one reader reported, “because she expects me to need tons of information the way she does. She constantly asks questions that I didn’t ask, wouldn’t ask, and generally don’t think I need to know the answers to.” Questioners themselves sometimes wish they could accept expectations without probing them so relentlessly. A Questioner told me ruefully, “I suffer from analysis paralysis. I always want to have one more piece of information.”