Habits. Tough to break, even harder to form. Yet they underpin much of our behaviours.
Last year we analysed which habits were being made, lost, or just frozen due to enforced change from the pandemic. It’s a rare mass experiment in behaviour change.
We’ve recently refreshed this research (read it here), so you can read more on what’s happened, and happening.
The longer the pandemic alters behaviours, the greater the ‘stickiness’ of the new habits formed. In many cases what’s happened has been an acceleration of multi-year mega-trends – such as that towards wellness, or around digital collaboration technologies.
Of particular note are the contradictions inherent in our choices. We’ve long known human beings aren’t rational, but our markedly increased exercise habits seem somewhat incongruous alongside our increased imbibing of alcohol…
Equally, we can see plenty of evidence that people’s desire to travel is undimmed, as soon as they’re able, and comfortable.
We will travel again, we will socialise again, but it might be interspersed with more online shopping, a quick 5km run, and a facetime with Gran, accompanied by another G&T…
Overall UK lockdown 3 hasn’t seen major differences in habits from lockdown 1’s impacts. Largely we are just over the novelty of Zoom, even though we are using it, we aren’t discussing it as much. Thankfully quizzes were left long behind…
So much changes, yet so much remains the same. We know what we like, and we like what we know.
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