Trayless, One Week Later

It's been a week since I've used a tray, and honestly, shifting my behavior hasn't been that difficult. It requires a little more conscious thought when going into the dining halls, as the trays are in the front and if I just went on autopilot I would probably pick one up. And just being vigilant about this behavior has led me to re-examine all the other little things I do. I'm working on 5 minute showers now, and instead of throwing away my yogurt cup, I did a little research and found out that Tufts recycles the kind of plastic that it was made out of, so I recycled it! I guess this could be classified as positive reinforcement--as when I don't use a tray, I feel good about helping the environment and achieving my goal, and that happy feeling is definitely an incentive.

I've also been trying to convince my friends to join me in this behavior, and even that hasn't been as hard as I thought. If I'm eating with a group, I usually suggest that we put our stuff down first (thus making it easier to have a place to bring multiple trips of food to, if needed) and announce that I'm not using trays anymore and why and that I would really appriciate it if they did too. The hard thing, though, will be getting them to stick with it, as I think most people just do it once to humor me. Even though some friends aren't so into it, i've still been telling everyone about my habit modification. This way, if I slip up and forget, my friends will be there to remind me/heckle me about it. I did this to Alex the other day when he didn't finish all the food on his plate (as that's the behavior he's trying to modify) and convinced the other people we were eating with to heckle him as well, and it got him to at least attempt at finishing his peas...

One of the things that I have noticed is a big factor in determining this (and a lot of other) behaviors is convenience. Most of my friends recognized that they don't particularly need trays, they just do it out of habit and the fact that it saves them an extra trip. So maybe it wouldn't be so hard to phase out trays at Tufts. Another thing that MB pointed out is that Tufts has rediculously small cups, so everyone always takes 2 or 3 cups, making it difficult to carry that and a plate without a tray. So if they took away the trays and gave us larger cups, this might just work for everyone...but perhaps that is a project for another day.