The Hat Problem

The Hat Problem I'm talking about has nothing to do with the game theory version in mathematics. Rather it has to do with psychology and resistance to change.

The problem came about when I was in high school. In my sophmore year in high school I decided that I would wear a baseball cap. I can't remember why I wanted to wear one but I ended up wearing one. At some point in my high school life I decided that I didn't want to wear it anymore. In my junior year I was still wearing the hat and trying to decide a point when it would be "ok" to stop wearing it. The Hat Problem is born.

Stated simply the Hat Problem is: when a precedent is already set when is an appropriate time to break the status quo?

The precedent in my case was that I decided to wear a hat. The "status quo" after having been wearing the hat for a while was the fact that I was wearing a hat. The precedent of me appearing at school wearing a hat had been made and (to me) my fellow students would expect me to wear a hat.

In pondering a solution to the Hat Problem I pondered a good time to cease wearing a hat. I thought that during winter recess it would be enough. I thought that during February recess it would be enough. I thought about weekends. It never was the right time, though. The "right" time, it turns out, was over the summer break between my junior and senior year in high school. So during my senior year in high school I did not wear a hat.

This Hat Problem can be made into a generic case for anything; it earned its name due to my experiences in high school with baseball caps.