A couple years ago, I read on the side of a box of tea that you should “always use fresh water before boiling. Previously boiled water has lost oxygen…”. The implication being it won’t taste as good. Or it won’t steep the tea as well. Who knows, really, but I believed it. I casually accepted this as fact and felt a little better knowing that I knew a little secret to making my coffee and tea just a little bit better than before. Fresh water! Sounds true.

Months passed, and I dumped many a pot of previously boiled water down the drain. Mostly, this was water that had been sitting out overnight, but sometimes it was simply water from a few hours earlier, still warm. Something in the back of my mind made me wonder if it really mattered (I didn’t seem to be able to tell in the slightest), and it felt ridiculous at times, but I brushed those thoughts aside and kept pouring, wasting time and water over-and-over again.

But recently I decided this “not knowing” thing is pretty dumb, so I did some quick research and found it probably makes no difference whether you use fresh water or previously boiled for your coffee, and, most importantly, I can’t tell the difference. So I stopped dumping then and there.

Belief and habit thus changed.

This whole episode got me thinking, how many other unnecessary things might I be doing just because someone or something said I should?

There are many habits and decisions we make where it truly doesn’t make that much difference to research deeply and find things out for yourself. If you don’t spend that much time on something and/or it’s not important/interesting/life-threatening to you, then you probably should just dump the preboiled water and move on.

But I enjoy my brewed beverages, and I spend a fair amount of my life making them, so this counts as something I should pay attention to.

Yes, this previously boiled water belief might seem like a ridiculous thing to mention. A small bad habit to break in the grand scheme of things that isn’t going to amount to much in the long-term and has little impact on my day. At least, that’s one perspective.

Here’s another: if you can’t change these small beliefs that seemingly don’t matter, how will you ever hope to change the big ones that do?