Beware the Tyranny of Routine
How to stop your daily habits from consuming your life
Our time is precious — we don’t have a lot of it. Which is why taking time to relax and recharge can fill us with existential dread. We fear being unproductive because something primordial tells us we need to be making the most of every minute. This desire for productivity has led us to routinize nearly every aspect of our lives, giving us a false sense of control and value.
As we push ourselves to become more productive, we fall into a cycle of behaviors and habits that reinforce what we already know and believe. We might think we’re cultivating good habits, and often we are, but if we become too single-minded in our pursuit of routine, and too rigid in our goal setting, we can miss opportunities to gain critical wisdom and experience.
We make plans, and then life happens. Being too inflexible can set us up for a rude awakening. When we rely too heavily on daily routines, we risk becoming change-averse and vulnerable to shocks. Breaking this pattern is not easy: it requires us to maintain self-awareness and understand when our routines are supporting us and when they are stopping us from moving forward. When we’re caught up in our routines, it can be uncomfortable to step outside of them.
