to routine or to not routine...
that is the question.
Often, words carry with it a happiness quotient as soon as you read it or think of it. I’d like to think it’s just because of how some letters string together, leaving a sound that simply emits cheerful energy regardless of meaning - like how some sad songs sound happy because of the key they’re being played in. But a simpler theory probably rules here over a mystical phenomenon at play, in that words sound happy when we prescribe it with like meaning and feelings.
Confetti. Friendship. Saturdays. Moonlight.
There are some words that exude a more subjective and complex mood of a sound, I’d wonder.
Coffee. Work. Honesty. Retirement. Vulnerability.
These words carry with it a need for more perspective and context to define the specific energy they present in a given moment of time and space.
I write this think-piece, because I’ve been reflecting specifically about a word that I think is often wrongly attributed with wrong energy. It’s interesting really, because it’s more complicated than it initially seems to be. I would think that many of us do crave it to an extent, even often idolizing people who seem to have it. Yet, when we do progressively fall into it, so many of us feel trapped, or allow it to encompass our lives with dull energy.
Routine.
Oxford defines routine as “a sequence of actions regularly followed; a fixed program.” Blech. How… dull.
As much as that is exactly what a routine is, I really do trust that there are always ways to find a sense of romance in routine. So much so that routine could be craved for when you fall asleep every night, rather than feeling overreaching dread at yet another robotic day.
More often than not, I find myself in the most thriving phases of my life when I’m practicing some sort of routine. But it takes work to get to this place. Finding the right routine is a process, and one that only happens when I give myself the grace, patience, and work it takes to make them feel seamlessly meshed into my everyday life’s needs and wants, and dreams and demands.
About two weeks ago, I came back home from an incredibly reflective and eventful of a trip to Australia. In the first few days of getting back, I struggled to fit right back into the routine I loved having merely three weeks prior. Every hour felt like a drag, things like my hill runs or reading time or meal prepping that brought me joy felt like chores, and everything in-between from work to eating felt without life. Thinking back, it was likely a case of simple vacation hangover - but it did get me to strongly reflect about what routines and how I run my life on the regular means to me.
Routines are harder than just curating a checklist, really. In fact, like the law of diminishing returns suggests, I’d argue that any routine would stop bringing anyone marginal utility if simply a rigid list of items. We’re human - our needs and wants, our dreams and demands, our energy banks and limitations, shift on the regular. When rigid routines are used to calibrate our days or are treated to be scorecards for how we’re doing on the regular, we’re bound to find exhaustion or a sense of stagnation.
Now, don’t forget - I thrive in routine. Only routines that I carefully piece together with tender care and reflection to make uniquely my own, however. It’s more than just curating a wireframe and checklist for my everyday, but rather a constant practice of reflecting, prototyping, and making adjustments to find the right rhythm. This process may look different for each one of us.
For me, it’s all about delicately balancing the things that bring me both incremental joy with relative permanence and romanticizing, or at least, bearably tackling the responsibilities I have as a working adult - while adding surprise elements to break me off from my routine such that I find a release from it time-to-time but also getting me to re-appreciate the routine when I’m back at it. Planned chaos, as I like to call it.
I’m also someone who likes breaking down my dreams, hustles, and plans of action into segments, I like designing my routine against actual goal posts that I can count down for. Instead of just planning to run everyday, I like pegging a half marathon or triathlon to work up to. I don’t even need to fully sign up for every single goal post to avoid pressure; but it’s helpful and stimulating to feel like there’s a direction I’m working towards.
And for the things where it’s about general mindfulness, like reading or meditation time, it’s easy to see the incremental joy, peace, and change it brings into my everyday amidst busy schedules, when forced into it for a while.
And this is the bit where I was alluding to how routines take work. They may feel a bit hellish even, especially when you stray away from having one, or have never had one in the first place. Maybe in your design process, there’s even some habits or things you may realize you want to kick out of your routine for it doesn’t give you the incremental joy you thought it would give you.
Upon reflection, I realized that what I felt a couple of weeks ago when I started to feel lifeless energy from my routine was something that was building up for a while. Questions about why I was doing what I was doing, and how I was going about it, and the visions I gave for myself a while ago vs. how I was performing against them were coming up, yet I was shelving them for not just three weeks of vacation, but for a while. I forced myself to fall straight back into my routine amidst vacation hangover and a lack of re-calibration, making it all feel so unnatural and unwanted.
In the middle of a seemingly uneventful morning run, the screeching noises in my mind may have arrived at a reaching point - counterintuitively but thankfully, bursting to reach a point of silence and solitude allowing me to reflect upon everything I shoved away for the past few months.
More to come about that, but back to the root of it - this is exactly what the process of a routine is. A constant chase - a remarkably rewarding one when met with composure and agility - of designing, practicing, contemplating, re-designing, and repeating from time to time till it is your own each time.
Not so dull, after all.