Routine Living: Pros and Cons
Living by the clock for productivity optimization!
Welcome to All the Tasks Fit to Print, my newsletter on all issues productivity-related for authors (and other solopreneurs)!
This is the final part of a three-part series on how to approach building new habits by learning what kind of mental framework you use to create a schedule.
The first post was an overview discussing “patterns vs. routines,” and I suggest you read that in order to understand what the heck I’m talking about!
Now it’s time to focus on what it means to be a “Routines Person”!
Routines are structured sequences of actions performed at specific times or within set intervals. They are often associated with discipline and regularity, providing a framework that dictates when certain activities should occur.
My ex-husband was a wonder of a “routine person.” As I mentioned in the post about patterns, he woke up at 6:45 am and headed out the door to work at 7:10 am every single workday so that he would arrive at his job a few minutes before it was time to clock in. He did not even really think about it: the alarm went off, he rolled out of bed, took a shower and got dressed, grabbed a coke (he detested coffee), and then left the house.
As a pattern person, I understood the sequence of events, but what floored me was the regimentation of his schedule to the clock. There was a time for everything throughout the week, including going to the club (by 10:00 pm on Friday night, RIP Barbarella’s Orlando *sobbing*) or doing laundry (Sunday evening).
Of course, there were alterations, such as social events, holidays, and sick days. He treated such things as the exceptions to his rules, and could roll with the punches when he needed to. But underneath the rare act of spontaneity was a routine tied to the clock. If he got lost in his day due to unexpected circumstances, he could look at the clock and know what he was supposed to be doing.
This was never more obvious than the (very few) times we went to the gym together. I would practice my pattern of variable workouts, depending on my mood and how my body was feeling. Sometimes I finished up in thirty minutes or less, but sometimes I felt compelled to run long (literally, on the treadmill) and would just keep going.
It drove Mike absolutely nuts.
For him, the gym was a one-hour-long activity. Whatever he did or didn’t do, it had to fit into that hour. If he got finished with a workout early, no he didn’t. He would just go do more working out until the hour was up. Then, when the clock ticked over, he was done. It was time for dinner. Time to go. What the fuck was I doing, still huffing and puffing on the damn treadmill????!? DINNER TIME! DINNER!!!!
We never got into a fight over things like that (our marriage was, overall, very amicable) but it stressed him out. I mean, I stressed him out in a lot of ways (sorry, baby, I never meant to!) but the fact that I could sleep through three alarms in the morning and then take an hour to make coffee was a confounding mystery he could not comprehend. To him, my schedule was less a pattern and more random chaos.
Such is the mind of a “routines person,” who finds their productivity groove in hitting the mark on the clock or the schedule to the second.
I think the majority of popular productivity gurus are people who thrive on routines. Those are the ones who give advice about managing your calendar down to the half hour and preach about “get up every morning at 5:00 AM and hit the gym first thing!” Given that our modern world does run by the clock, they are primed to succeed within that kind of structure.
Yet, many of them still have trouble setting up a new routine or creating a long-lasting habit.
Routines, even moreso than patterns, are habits in and of themselves. So, let’s say you want to start a morning workout regimen and you decide to wake up an hour earlier in order to do it. Structurally, this sounds like a perfect solution—but the problem is, your routine is already set to wake up at your usual time. Pushing that back means breaking the existing routine first, and people tend to underestimate how hard that it is.
Unfortunately, the atomic habit technique is not the best solution here. Moving your wake up time earlier and earlier by ten minutes every week sounds like a perfect approach, but your “routines” brain will just see chaos and disorder since you aren’t waking up at your “normal” time anymore, or any regular time at all. Ref. “Random chaos.”
I have found that “routines people” tend to work better with a blunt force attack. They need to break it to remake it. That is, instead of doing everything the same but adding in a workout, re-organize your entire morning. It’s a reprogramming approach to habit forming, where you break the old routine completely to replace it with a new one.
For example, let’s assume your standing routine is: alarm at 6:00 AM, shower, make coffee by 6:30 AM, get dressed, drink coffee and pack lunch, be out the door by 7:10 AM.
To create a new habit, you need to mess this up completely. You might think that just waking up an hour earlier to get the workout in first thing is the ideal plan, but it will not succeed for you long term, I guarantee it. Why?
Because your brain will treat the change as a disruption, not a new habit.
Instead, mess the whole thing up, I mean all of it, top to bottom: alarm at 5:00 AM, workout, make coffee while packing lunch, shower, dress, drink coffee, be out the door by 7:05 AM.
It might look like minor shifts, but your brain will treat it as if it is being reprogrammed. It’s completely new territory that needs to be figured out, and that little bit of confusion is just the push your brain needs to establish a new routine with new habits. It won’t be easy, unfortunately. You’ll be surprised at how hard it is to flip the shower and coffee making order of things! But once it takes, it will be set in stone.
Blunt-force reprogramming works for people who prefer routines because it still gives them the time-defined structure they need. Trying to soft-shoe it (or atomic-habits it) is why they so often fail to create long-lasting habits on the back of current routines.
The most important point here is that once you understand how your brain works, you can use other hacks to supplement your routine in order to optimize your productivity.
As mentioned earlier, the atomic habits technique is not a great one for people who like routines. The incremental approach to change rarely works.
However, time blocking is a great way for people to introduce a little bit of flexibility into their routines, which they might need whether they like or not! It’s especially useful for tasks that have a lot of variables that can impact the timing of the work being done.
The pomodoro method is good match for people who prefer routines, as you can structure the work sprints around how much time you have to spend on the activity. Combining time blocking with the pomodoro technique is a “killer app” for routines people, keeping their tasks marching along to the clock.
Routines people really thrive with calendaring their schedule, especially using task apps like Todoist or more feature-rich project management apps like Trello, Asana, and Monday. Even a good old fashioned spreadsheet can prove invaluable for tracking your time and schedule.
The major “con” with routines is allowing them to become fossilized and brittle, or give you a false sense of security. The threat of changing a routine might seem so overwhelming that you just never get around to changing anything, which will inevitably lead to intellectual and psychological stagnation. If you start to find yourself being superstitious about your routine, or irrationally angry when it gets interrupted, it is time to step back and check whether that routine is really making your live better or not.
Also, being held captive by your routine can put a burden on your relationships and your overall well-being by not allowing space for spontaneity and flexibility. Sometimes you really do need to break the routine and just go to the park with your family!
Routines are fantastic ways to maximize your productivity, so if your brain likes to live by the clock, consider consciously developing your routines to fit your goals and aspirations!
Watch for my new book!
As “The Task Mistress,” I am a holistic productivity coach for creatives. Using my background as a project manager and all-round productivity nerd, I help creative entrepreneurs find holistic productivity so they can achieve all their goals, both personal and professional.
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