In the latest episode of the Change Signal podcast (#37, Hidden Rituals of Change), the guest was asked what diffentiates ritual from habit and answered that ritual is, “something with a little more emotion and a little more meaning.” I don’t entirely disagree with that defintion, but I don’t think it quite covers it either. I think the key difference is that the purpose of a habit is to decrease cognitive load while the purpose of a ritual is to increase that load.

The benefit of a habit is that the habit is something we carry out nearly on autopilot and so it reduces cognitive load. When I come home from work, I have a habit of putting my wallet and keys in a tray on my desk. After years of repetition, it doesn’t require any conscious effort to do. It’s just part of my coming home routine.

Ritual, on the other hand, derives its benefit from the fact that it is carried out with thought, awareness, and intent. While the physical actions taken may be no more complex than those executed in a habit, the ritual’s actions are supposed to be carrried out in a way that focuses the mind on the actions and the purpose behind them; to increase cognitive load.

This distinction implies that a set of actions could slip from habit to ritual and back with each repitition, based on where the focus of the performer is on a given day. A priest, for instance, could recite liturgy from muscle memory and carry it out as a habit or be fully present in the recitation and thus perform it a true ritual. Or, in a more business context, an employee could organize their work space at the end of the day with mindful awareness as a way to both prepare their desk for the next day and transition their thinking to be fully present for their family, or he could already be thinking about what to make for dinner and organizing his desk out of habit.

The idea of the actions of a ritual serving as a prompt for mindfulness also makes me think about the idea of positive friction.

There’s also maybe an aspect of purpose to the difference between a habit and a ritual. Maybe the purpose of a habit is the direct outcome of the action and purpose of a ritual is something more abstract? In the ritual of communion, for instance, the action is eating a wafer and drinking a sip of wine, but the purpose is not to eat but, though that eating, to be closer to the divine. In putting my keys away, the purpose is just to put my keys where they go so I can find them easily the next day.