Josh Mason, a former police detective and fugitive hunter with nearly 13 years of law enforcement experience, published a February 2026 essay on Medium describing five everyday habits he abandoned almost immediately after becoming a cop and joining the force. Mason, who holds a master’s degree in psychology and went on to work patrol, SWAT, and detective roles within the same department throughout his career, argues that the behavioral shifts he made were not just professional adjustments but fundamental changes to how he moved through the world. The habits he dropped – and the reasons he dropped them – carry practical lessons that reach far beyond law enforcement.
Those lessons matter because the habits Mason describes are deeply common. Millions of people scroll through social media without thinking, walk into rooms without noticing their surroundings, and say whatever is on their minds with little filter. For most people, those patterns are simply the background noise of modern life. For a patrol officer, each one carries consequences. Understanding why Mason quit these behaviors – and what science says about the alternatives – gives anyone a sharper lens for their own daily routines.
Before looking at each habit, it helps to understand Mason’s context. Mason describes himself as a former detective and fugitive hunter with a master’s degree in psychology, translating high-stakes tactical lessons into guides for modern life. It took nearly two years for him to get hired, and he went on to spend almost thirteen years in police work within the same department. That longevity means the habit changes he describes were not just rookie adjustments – they stuck across an entire career.
Habit 1: Making Assumptions Before Walking Into a Situation
The first habit Mason dropped was entering situations with a predetermined script in his head. His essay opens with a vivid early-career lesson: he arrested a juvenile for burglary and brought the boy home to his mother, expecting a parental lecture. Instead, the mother punched her son in the face, was arrested herself, and Mason was left standing in the kitchen with no legal guardian to release the child to. As Mason reflected on the incident, he realized part of what had gone wrong was his own fault. The kid had burglarized a home and deserved to be arrested. But Mason had walked into that kitchen assuming he understood what was going to play out.
Directly targets the core topic of behavioral shifts officers experience after entering the profession.
That story captures something psychologists call “confirmation bias” – the brain’s tendency to filter incoming information through what it already expects to see. Research has consistently shown that the human brain prefers confirming existing beliefs over updating them. For officers, that cognitive shortcut can be fatal. For the rest of us, it simply keeps us stuck in predictable misunderstandings – at work, in relationships, and in conversations where we stopped really listening the moment we decided we already knew the punchline.
Situational awareness is a critical skill that allows people to make decisions that better protect themselves and those around them. The habit of going in without assumptions is essentially the habit of staying open – arriving at any situation willing to read what is actually happening rather than what you expected. Police academy training formalizes this through what instructors call pre-arrival assessment: forming a working theory before you arrive, then actively checking whether the evidence on the ground confirms or contradicts it. That is a skill worth building outside of law enforcement, too.
Habit 2: Scrolling Through a Phone Without Awareness of Surroundings
The second habit Mason abandoned was mindless phone use in public. Law enforcement officers are trained to keep their hands free and their eyes scanning. A phone in hand means reduced reaction time, a narrowed visual field, and a posture that signals distraction to anyone paying attention. Veteran officers consistently note seeing colleagues walking with their heads in their phones and not paying attention. In a training context, that is considered a safety deficiency. In everyday life, the same behavior is so normal it barely registers.
The wellness case against reflexive phone scrolling is substantial. Excessive social media use can trigger feelings of inadequacy, dissatisfaction, and isolation, and worsen symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress. A 2018 study from the University of Pennsylvania, published by researchers at Penn’s Annenberg School for Communication, found that limiting social media use to 30 minutes per day led to significant reductions in anxiety, depression, loneliness, sleep problems, and fear of missing out. The benefit was not just about screen time totals – it was about reclaiming the headspace that constant checking consumes.
Mason’s training introduced a different default: eyes up, hands available, attention distributed across the environment. Increasing situational awareness can be important not only in personal life but is especially crucial in environments where identifying criminal behavior or dangerous situations matters. But even for someone who never carries a badge, the cognitive benefits of spending less time in a screen and more time reading a room are well-documented. Presence is a skill. Like any skill, it atrophies when unused.
Habit 3: Oversharing Personal Information
The third thing Mason stopped doing was telling people too much about himself. In law enforcement, oversharing is a genuine liability. Details about an officer’s home address, family members, daily schedule, or personal opinions can be used against them. That concern shapes communication habits at a fundamental level – officers learn early to be thoughtful about what they disclose, to whom, and when.
Targets the specific source mentioned in the article to find related video content from or about Josh Mason.
For people who are not in law enforcement, the risks of oversharing are different but real. Research in communication psychology has found that chronic oversharing is frequently linked to anxiety and an unmet need for external validation. Oversharing – sometimes referred to as “sadfishing” – can be an irresistible habit or unconscious tendency used to avoid facing challenges. In other words, oversharing is often a sign that a person cannot sit with themselves and listen attentively. The emotional relief it provides is temporary. The exposure it creates tends to be permanent.
Mason’s shift toward information discipline was not about becoming closed off or guarded – it was about becoming intentional. There is a meaningful difference between sharing something because it genuinely serves a relationship and sharing it because discomfort is unbearable without an outlet. The former builds a connection. The latter builds a habit of seeking relief from the outside rather than developing internal regulation. Self-awareness is crucial for changing any habit. That applies here as much as anywhere: before sharing, ask what purpose it serves.
Habit 4: Venting and Complaining as a Default Coping Strategy
Complaining is socially normalized in most workplaces. It serves as a bonding glue. It signals authenticity. It can even feel productive – like venting pressure from a system under stress. Mason’s police career challenged that assumption early. In a profession where psychological resilience is operationally necessary, complaining functions as a leak: it does not resolve the problem, and it gradually erodes the mental framework needed to handle what comes next.
The brain builds a model of the world based on repeated input. If you develop the habit of complaining, you will subconsciously begin to look for things to complain about. The people in your life, the weather, your work, and your situation can all start to look worse. The habit of complaining is not just bad for mental health but can be damaging to the people around you as well. Neuroscience supports this. The brain reinforces what it repeatedly practices. A routine of focused grievance trains the brain to find grievance more readily over time.
This does not mean that officers – or anyone else – suppress negative emotions. Mental health professionals make a clear distinction between processing emotions with trusted support and using chronic complaining as a substitute for coping. Officers face chronic stress from the demands of the job, administrative pressures, and the challenges of maintaining work-life balance. Chronic stress is a well-documented risk factor for a wide range of physical and mental health problems. Managing that stress requires real coping strategies – exercise, sleep, structured social support, and professional help when needed – not a running commentary of complaints that reinforces the perception that nothing can change.
Habit 5: Sitting With His Back to the Room
The fifth habit Mason abandoned was the instinctive civilian tendency to sit anywhere available without considering the position. Officers are trained to sit with their backs to walls and their eyes toward doors and exits. That positioning is not paranoia – it is functional awareness. Someone watching the entrance sees threats earlier, processes information faster, and retains the option to respond. Someone with their back to the room has already surrendered those advantages before anything happens.
Without situational awareness, officers run the risk of endangering their colleagues, themselves, and the public. The job requires always “having your head on a swivel” – scanning the environment while focusing on the task at hand. The Metropolitan Police Academy’s situational awareness training materials describe this principle directly: officers learning to position themselves effectively at a restaurant, for example, should choose a seat that offers a view of the entire space and think through exits before sitting down. That is not a professional quirk. It is a trainable habit that most people never develop because they were never given a reason to.
For non-officers, the behavior translates into a broader orientation toward environments. The point is not to become anxious or tactical in everyday settings. The point is to be present enough to know where you are, who is nearby, and what is happening around you. That kind of awareness is calming – not threatening – because it replaces vague background unease with actual information.
Why These Habits Matter Beyond Law Enforcement
What makes Mason’s account worth reading carefully is that none of these five changes are specific to police work. They are responses to the same underlying challenge: how to move through a world that is often unpredictable without either being blindsided by it or becoming paranoid about it. The answer Mason arrived at, through professional necessity, is essentially a set of mindfulness practices – stay present, stay observant, stay measured in what you say and feel.
Officers who remain in a constant state of alertness may struggle to “turn off” this heightened awareness when off duty, leading to difficulties in relaxing and engaging in everyday activities. This persistent tension can strain personal relationships and reduce overall quality of life. Mason’s habits do not describe hypervigilance – they describe calibrated attention. The difference matters. Hypervigilance is exhausting and ultimately counterproductive. Calibrated attention – knowing where you are, choosing words deliberately, resisting assumptions, managing complaints consciously – is sustainable and transferable.
True resilience comes from preparation – including physical fitness, mental health habits, diverse relationships, and non-law enforcement hobbies. That formula works as well for a teacher or an accountant as it does for a patrol officer. The habits Mason dropped were not making him safer or healthier. The habits he built in their place – presence, discipline, awareness, emotional management – did both.
What This Means for You
Josh Mason’s five habits are a useful mirror. Most people reading this will recognize at least one – the reflexive phone check in a public space, the overshared frustration on social media, the assumption carried into a difficult conversation, the complaint repeated enough that it starts to feel like fact. These are habits of inattention, not character flaws. They are correctable with deliberate practice.
Start with one. Pick the habit from this list that resonates most and treat it as a two-week experiment. If it is oversharing, apply a simple pause before disclosing: what purpose does this serve, and for whom? If it is assumptions, try arriving at the next difficult conversation with a stated intention to hear something you did not expect. If it is positional awareness, choose your seat with intention the next time you are in a public space. None of these changes requires a police academy. They require only the decision to stop moving through the world on autopilot. That decision – made consistently – compounds.
Disclaimer: This is AI-assisted content. Reviewed for accuracy. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before making medical decisions.
Read More: 9 Daily Habits for Better Brain Health, According to Neurologists