What is retiring old habits?

Retiring old habits is a concept in personal epistemology: Some agents outlive their usefulness but persist because removing them feels risky or costly. Legacy agents consume resources, create confusion, and block the deployment of better alternatives. Identifying them is the first step toward a clean epistemic portfolio.

Example: Every morning you open a task management app and scan a dashboard you set up two years ago. The categories no longer match your work. The priority labels reflect a role you left. You don't use the data it shows — you just glance at it and open a different tool. But you haven't deleted the dashboard because you spent weeks configuring it, and somewhere in your mind you think you might need it again. That dashboard is a legacy agent. It still runs. It still costs you attention. It no longer serves you.

This concept is part of Phase 30 (Agent Lifecycle) in the How to Think curriculum, which builds the epistemic infrastructure for agent lifecycle.