A Different Place by Camy/Camille (Camy Tang)

Recently I was reading a book about making new habits and breaking bad habits. It was well-written and easily understandable, but it also talked a lot about the psychology behind behavior, which was fascinating to me as a psych major in college.

One thing that struck me was a behavioral study that looked at the habits of college students transferring to a new college and a new living space. The study found that the students were able to create new habits much easier when they changed their location. In a new living space, they created new habits and kept them to a statistically significant degree of success over people who remain in the same environment.

I’ve always struggled with discipline in my Bible reading. I’m terribly inconsistent and I want to become more diligent and consistent in my time in the Word. So I decided to try to apply this information to my quiet times.

I obviously couldn’t pack up and move to a new house, but I found a new place to do my quiet times in the morning that I hadn’t used very often—our dining room table. (That photo above is the view from my seat at the table.) We hardly use our dining room table at all and it had been piled with random stuff, but I cleaned it off and decided to try using it as my quiet time space every morning.

So far, I’ve been consistent for two weeks in a row. There’s something about having a different place to go to every day that puts me in a different mindset. Unfortunately, I’m still easily distracted while I’m doing my Bible reading, but at least I’m doing it on a regular basis, which was better than before.

What do you do for your quiet times? You may have already discovered this neat trick to help you in your discipline, but it’s brand-new to me, and it seems to be working!