Pale Corridors of Routine

I've been very resistant to the idea of routine for a long time.  It's for a combination of reasons: part residual youthful rebellion, part cynicism, part of my self-conception as a "free" and "independent" person, part I-don't-know-what.  Conscious or otherwise, none are particularly well thought through.  Whenever I hear the word "routine", this song starts playing in my head:

"Outside, open-mouthed crowds

pass each other as if they're drugged.

Down pale corridors of routine

where life falls un-atoned". 

Ah, 90s music.  It's all downhill from there.  Anyway, recently I've been challenging my ingrained instincts about the evils of Routine, and come to an uncomfortably exhilarating realisation:

Routine is liberating.

When I first took the conscious effort to work less and "live" more, I assumed that the abundance of free time would spur me on to a new phase of creativity, spontaneity and living-in-the-moment happiness.  It didn't.  Why?  It has something to do with distraction.  I'm very easily distracted.  I should be doing this, but as I'm doing it, I notice or think about something else I should be doing, and as I'm doing that...and so on.  Nothing ever seems to get done.  And so I find myself in an unending state of "meta-distraction" - distracted by my own distraction.

It's extraordinary the amount of time this occupies.  While I'm a big fan of pottering, both indoors and out, that's a state of mind as well as of body, and you can't potter when you're distracted by the mundane demands of everyday life: the need to do the washing up, clean your teeth, or make tomorrow's packed lunch.

So I've been experimenting with setting myself a routine that captures every necessity of my life: both at home and at work, and against my intuition, I've found that actual freedom may be here after all.  It involves not just allocating certain time slots to certain tasks (like writing this blog post, for which I've blocked out an hour) but following checklists of the littlest activities.  I have a "home from work" checklist in Google Keep that's set to activate at 7:30pm, around the time I get home on work days that covers everything from taking off my shoes, to charging my phone, to emptying refilling my water bottle, to making sure my towels are in the bathroom so when I stumble bleary-eyed into the bathroom the following morning, I can get straight into the shower, secure in the knowledge that I won't have to scamper naked and soggy back to my bedroom when I get out.  It's kind of insane, kind of obsessive, but it makes me feel good, and so I'm going to keep doing it.  I have lists for every situation.

Amongst these, I block out time on my calendar (Google probably knows more about me than I know about myself, oh no) for the changing tasks I have to complete during the day, week, or month.  When to go to the shop and what to buy, when to take my compost to the allotment, when to clean the bathroom, do laundry, order repeat prescriptions, or change the bed sheets.  The purpose of all of this is not to have to think about any of it at all.  Without thinking, there can't be any distraction either.  My mind clears.  I become focused, and happy.  It's working extraordinarily well. 

It works at work, too.  Now I've taken on more responsibilities, and soon I'm going to start managing at least one person, too, I have to organise my time for similar reasons.  Everything in its right place!  A song about distraction, if ever there was one.

It's "its", not "it's".

But by making a routine that gets my job done, and following it, I find I can keep distraction at bay here too.  No thinking, just acting.  Then when I do need to think, I have the mental strength and flexibility to do so.  Thinking is not the natural state of the human organism.  It requires effort.

Time's up.  End of post.  Next!

Related posts

Over the Edge of the Map
The State of Play
The No-Day Working Week
On Ticking Things Off Lists
The Art of Pottering
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