Bad habits
Is breakfast, Thursday, work and Christmas always the same?
This week I’m changing things up. Breaking the routine. Sharper sentences. Like this one. No pictures of rabbits. Or foxes. Or the vale of woe.
No random interjections like “bath curd hammerhead McSeahorse”.
No, no, no, it’s all got to change.
If this is unsettling, then fair enough. We are creatures of habit. We like patterns and grooves. Everyone always votes for ‘change’, but no one really likes it. We are reassured by regularity. Timetables and schedules keep us on track.
And many routines are undoubtedly beneficial: those that entrench circadian rhythms make for more reliable sleep1. Those that set boundaries for children make them more secure. 2 3
Good habits help people meet goals, like learning to play the viola or dance a quickstep or swim the Channel. Healthy lifestyles are more durable when we yoke them to the calendar. Physical exercise, flossing, diet change, meditation… they are all far easier when inscribed into a daily or weekly cycle.4
Routines can set up the working day for success and ensure that things get done. Without routines we might wear odd socks to important meetings, or wake at seven only to find it’s seven in the evening.
But sometimes I wonder if we are really living when we stick to a script. Some research has found that almost half of our daily actions are just us acting out habits without thinking. 5
How often do you have your morning coffee without really tasting or noticing it, just because that’s what you do every day? Or turn the telly on straight after your evening meal? Do you have a calendar with identical fixed points on it for every week? Or tumble through the same weekend over and over again.
Is breakfast, Thursday, sex and Christmas always the same?
Work is the worst for routines. The same sets of meetings and check-ins and processes. Four quarters, each with the same subdivisions. At some point in the evolution of work, somebody figured out that people are most useful when they stick to repeatable tasks that they can accomplish easily. Good for shareholders, bad for the human spirit. Actually, this is not just a capitalist thing: the Soviet Union was just as bad, getting people to do dull repetitive tasks in the name of fulfilling some five-year plan or other. They used drink to ease the monotony. I know because I was there.
Why do our psyches fall back so easily on the dull security of routine and habit? What about spontaneity and serendipity? Life is short. If you are lucky enough to get your three score years and ten, it is important that you live those 70 years and don’t just live the same year 70 times. 6
When I was deeply unwell, shambling through the vale of woe, there was no routine at all. Nothing in my calendar other than white space and black moods. Off work, alone at home, shivering with heterostasis. Lying on the floor in the morning gloom watching the clock tick around. 10am, 10 am, 10 am, must need new batteries. The lack of timetable was so alien to me that I think it became half the problem. Since I was seven years old I’ve been used to having my time boxed up like presents.
Indeed, a small but important part of recovery was to find something, anything, to stick into the week so that it wouldn’t just be a midnight ocean of emptiness. A gentle bit of volunteering every Monday. A yoga class at the gym on Friday. A regular dog walk with a friend, a sister. A music class on a Wednesday, if well enough. Slowly, the weeks took shape. Slowly I began to recognise myself again in a schedule that gave me something to get up for.
Of course, it wasn’t long before I reverted to type. Once well, I began to stuff my week with so much routine that before long I was a busy bat again. I feel I missed an opportunity to become someone slightly less boxed in.
So I very much enjoyed listening to a recent episode of the podcast Feel Better Live More. In it, the host Dr Rangan Chatterjee advocates changing our daily routines a little, if only just for the summer.
So I’ve been getting up an hour earlier than usual, and walking the dog slowly around the block in flip-flops in the earliest light of the day.
At first it felt strange. I was grumpy. A little more tired in the evenings. But it’s amazing how quickly something precarious and new can become firm and set. I almost look forward to it: the clippety clip of the dog’s paws; the subtle differences from one morning to the next; the sounds of the day before anyone has figured out what it’s going to be.
But I won’t do it for long.
Because then it will just become routine.
Braindrops (11)
These words all have something in common. What is it, and what do they need?
THE
MISTER
TALK
YEARS
(If this is too hard, I can give you a clue in the form of a giveaway fifth word. Send me an email with one aspect of your routine that you are going to change, and I will send the clue…)
Last week. These (topical) phrases are spelled identically, apart from the letter shown.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ S _ _ _ _ In court battle, make the expected points... (4,4,5)
HOLD ONE’S SERVE
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ N _ _ _ _ … and withstand the pressure (4,4,5)
HOLD ONE’S NERVE
Until next week
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpsy/article/PIIS2215-0366(18)30139-1/abstract
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10802-010-9447-5
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jftr.12549
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11641623/
“shambling through the vale of woe” hit me straight on. I have felt this often but never could I express it so beautifully. Thank you!!
Inspiring Mark! Going to unbox myself for the summer.