Flamingo eggs and the power of habit
'Sitting on a dud' is actually a good thing if it means you're making a habit, which grows your skill set and your mindset.
A flock of flamingos recently taught me the value of sitting on a dud.
Usually, that phrase means you’re wasting time. You’re incubating an egg that will never hatch. You’re launching a product no one will buy, releasing a movie no one will see, telling a joke that wouldn’t get a laugh out of a toddler on laughing gas.
The only time “sitting on a dud” is good is if the dud is a bomb, right?
But the way that zoo flamingos sit on dud or “dummy” eggs can teach us about the value of habits that prepare our skillset and mindset for the future.
On my most recent trip to Riverbanks Zoo here in Columbia, South Carolina, one of my daughters and I spotted a fluffy, white flamingo chick waddling in front of its preening parents.
My daughter hopes to work in wildlife care and conservation, so we couldn’t resist the opportunity to stop, lean up against the wooden fence and watch. The chick waddled awkwardly and looked around like it was still getting used to the world.
I struck up a conversation with a nearby zookeeper. One of my many questions was, “How big is a flamingo egg?”
“You can see one there,” the zookeeper said, and he pointed to the mounds of dirt that dotted the island in the flamingo pond. One flamingo had just stood up from its mound, revealing a white shell about the size of a softball.
“Wow, that’s got a baby flamingo in it?” I said.
“No, actually, that’s a dummy egg,” the zookeeper said.
He explained that flamingo eggs out in the open would become a target for rodents or other wild predators looking for a snack. The law of the jungle reigns even at the zoo.
So when a flamingo at the zoo lays an egg, the zookeepers retrieve it and test to see whether it’s fertilized. If it is, they place it in a safe building for incubation and put a dummy egg—a dud—in the mound where they retrieved the real egg.
You might say the dud is an egg-sact replica. It’s an actual flamingo egg shell that was hollowed out and filled with foam.
They put a dud egg in place for two reasons.
First, if the mother flamingo finds her egg missing (or replaced with an unconvincing plastic replica, like a large, candy-filled easter egg), she would rush to lay another egg in hopes of reproducing that season.
(I thought you couldn’t have too many flamingos, but apparently you can.)
Second, if the flamingo father and mother weren’t sitting on an egg all season, then they would be unprepared to be parents. Their chick would just show up one day and be like, “Are you my mother?” and they wouldn’t take care of it, thinking, “This can’t be my kid; I haven’t been sitting on an egg!”
Habits prepare us to perform
Sitting on a dud egg is an important part of a flamingo’s training for parenthood. As the flamingo parents take turns incubating the egg and gathering food for each other, they are creating routines that prepare them for the arrival of the chick.
The same holds true for your habits.
Suppose you want to run a marathon. You cannot just sign up and show up without any training runs. You need to start preparing months in advance. You build a habit of running. You break in the shoes, expand your lungs, make your heart stronger, and learn to pace yourself.
What about writing? You have to write a lot of duds before you have something worthwhile. No one will show up on your doorstep and hire you to write unless you’ve already built the habits that go with excellent writing.
James Clear, author of the book Atomic Habits, shares stories about how habits helped make Sir Richard Branson and J.K. Rowling. One habit that unites both of them is that they started. Branson started businesses, whether he felt ready or not. Rowling started writing, even though it wasn’t convenient. Their long-term successes depending on short-term habits.
Why habits make us
What makes habits so powerful? I see two reasons.
One is that habits develop skills that we need. Will Durant said, “We are what we repeatedly do… therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit.” Practice makes perfect, and habits make practice much more likely.
But this doesn’t apply to flamingos sitting on an egg. Nothing about sitting on an egg gives you the skill of taking care of a newly hatched chick.
That leads us to the second way habits make us, by influencing our mindset. Sitting on the egg day in and day out changes something about the birds. It signals to them that they are embarking on an adventure of parenting.
Our habits adjust our mindset and give us a new identity. If you go running every morning, you begin to think of yourself as a runner. If you write daily, you will be a writer, and will probably take advantage of more opportunities to write.
Clear quotes Leonard Cohen, who said, “Act the way you’d like to be and soon you'll be the way you act.”
That is the power of sitting on a dud. It prepares you for the real thing. It develops the skills and the mindset you need to reach your goals.
So whatever it is you’d like to do, now is the time to build the habits that lead to that goal. Don’t wait for the opportunity, or you might be like a flamingo who suddenly finds a chick and has no recollection of having an egg. You won’t be prepared to take care of it.
But if you start habits now, your skills and mindset will change so that you are prepared to meet your goal.
What I’m doing: I’m trying to reestablish the habit of writing after I had to focus on other things for weeks. This post was the result of a decision to write something today no matter what. I’m glad I got it done. Let’s hope it’s not a dud. 🥚