PhotoCredit: Bubbles
I have been thinking a lot about habits and routine lately. Being stuck in one place for over three months will do that to you. Usually I blame my frequent traveling for my lack of routine. Right now I have nothing to blame but my inner rebel.
A coach I once worked with said that when you are trying to adopt a new habit there are two reasons you fail. Either you are a brat - lacking the commitment and discipline for change, yikes! Or you are a wimp. I am not sure that “wimp” was his word, his point was that you were avoiding confronting the challenge.
Double Yikes.
It’s a stark contrast from one of my favorite books on habit “Daily Rituals: How Artists Work”. Daily Rituals is a book best described as delightful. It comprises a series of one-to-two page examinations of how the Greats of the past did their great things. From Immanuel Kant to Toni Morrison to Ernest Hemingway. The bite sized accounts make for a quick and inspired read. A great way to start your day.
Daily Rituals is ultimately a treatise on the importance of singular focus on your craft. None of the Greats did their work by accident. Gertrude Stein noted that while she was generally unable to write much more than 30 minutes a day “it makes a lot of writing year by year.”
It’s something James Clear speaks about in Atomic Habits. The cumulative effect of a lot of little focussed actions. It is also, as we know, the core ingredient in the power of compound interest.
Most contemporary books on productivity and vocation are harsh in comparison. Requiring stringent adherence to stated rules, to a routine of repetition, and to a level of, frankly, rather dehumanized existence. It all smacks of deprivation. And it all starts to get rather boring and joyless.
Joy feels like a hidden secret to motivation and productivity that few “modern” thinkers explore. A pursuit of the more human elements of eating and socializing and exercising could be considered a life well lived. In turn we have made all these about restriction and discipline and judgment.
Daily Rituals instead delivers a more human wisdom. Yes, we must attend to our vocation. We also must walk daily, spend significant time with friends, ensure that we eat well (there was a lot of focus on food as routine) and, evidently, to drink quantities of alcohol. Mostly not day-drinking but this was no group of rule-followers.
Call me a brat or a wimp but previously any attempt at a routine eluded me. I was trying to force-fit endless productivity into the hours of 5am to 9pm without boundary. Without consideration of friends and food and the frivolity of life. Covid-19 enforced zoom calls with friends, baking, eating, drinking a little more wine than usual, and lots of #puppylife. It’s forced a more human existence. I like it.
Now I make sourdough crackers at 6am while a furball plays at my feet. I answer emails while holding one end of a rope toy, with a growling mischief tugging at the other end. And I write, or think, in moments like this one. With the little dude passed out in his crate. The world whirling around us both. A moment I appreciate more because it’s a moment. It’s not a monotony of endless hours where I must be must be productive.
And do you know what? I think I am getting more done.
For Reals.