For the Love of Routine
The word “routine” has already found its way into one of my titles here on Liv In The City. Why? Because routine is awesome. “Routine” gets a bad rap for its connotations of predicability and boredom and its evocation of images of cartoon closets with hangers upon hangers of the same beige pantsuit. I get it. Hollywood and other media equate the idea of the go-with-the-flow lifestyle and riding on the back of untethered winds with sex appeal and intrigue. But, at least for me, if I tried to ride the winds, I would most certainly lose my balance and die and thereby not achieve anything I set out to. For me, routine is a tool of productivity.
Give me a day with nothing on the calendar and I will work that nothing to the max. But give me a day with work, school, and a run on the schedule, and I will find ways to fill the moments in-between the must-dos with the nice-to-dos. By placing regular bookends on my free time, I provide myself deadlines by which to complete even menial tasks. And in that way, I get s**t done. Without routine, periods of time are ill-defined, which calls for a painstaking two-step process. One: decide what you need and want to do in that time. Two: do it. I rather just have the second step. I rather have my clock yelling at me RIGHT NOW IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE TIME YOU HAVE TO WRITE THIS BLOG POST.
My love for routine is one of the reasons I am excited to once again start working in an office. My time in my apartment—in front of my personal laptop, with my books, with my laundry, with my vegetables to be cooked—will be limited and therefore more important than ever. This urgency fuels me. I will also be starting school again (more on that another time), so I will have more things I actually need to do. Which for me, means more of these to-do items will ultimately get checked off.
I understand that not everyone is wired this way. Routine is not the friend to natural procrastinators, who dread the idea of needing to be somewhere, with something, at a certain time. We’ve all started turning a bit more into these people during the pandemic, with our only routine items being Zoom calls for which we don’t even need to put on pants. (I totally put on pants, by the way, just in the British sense of the term.)
But routine is also important for your mental and physical health, especially when it comes to how you schedule your time in bed. For me, the first sign of a productive, full day is a productive, full morning. And science proves that waking up and going to sleep around the same time each day improves happiness, motivation, stress, and overall restfulness. I am not saying you have to be a morning person. You can still be a night person. But be an asleep-at-12am person on the regular, in that case. Not an 11pm person some nights and a 2am person other nights.
Now, I don’t mean to be prescriptive. Routine does not mean a jam-packed schedule with no room for nothingness. It means more regularity, sanity, and motivation in a day that could have remained blue-lit and blah. It means your nothingness and procrastination can take on more shape. In fact, in a day rife with routine, nothingness starts to feel less like laziness and more like a well-earned break. Earn your breaks.
Why do I feel the need to opine on such a boring subject? I believe in it. I can tell you that I am someone who thrives when busy and manages to get more done on a day full of responsibilities than on a day muddled with undefined hours. I believe this is a natural progression for us all. Fill your days. Develop a routine that makes you happy. And never rue the fact that you have stuff to do at this time and this time and this time and this time. Time is all we have. Have a plan for yours. As they say, use it or lose it.