There's a peculiar concept in African Ubuntu philosophy — 'I am because we are' — that most productivity advice completely ignores. We tend to treat habits as private battles: willpower versus weakness, you versus the couch. But the psychologist Albert Bandura's research on social learning shows that what we actually do is less determined by our intentions than by the people we observe doing it. Ubuntu and Bandura are pointing at the same thing from opposite directions: the self that forms habits is not a sealed unit. It's porous, constructed partly by witness. This Thursday, instead of asking how to discipline yourself into a fitness or work habit, ask who you're watching — and who's watching you. Put yourself in a room, physical or virtual, where the behavior you want is already ordinary to others.

Which of your habits are actually just the average behavior of the five people you spend the most time around?

Drawing from African Philosophy (Ubuntu) — Albert Bandura — Social Learning Theory (1977), synthesized with Ubuntu philosophy