Bend, Don't Break

I have gone through certain paradigms in terms of routines and my relationship with them in my life. First there was free-flowing chaos (no routine). This was largely a consequence of a highly flexible environment. Life without routine is not a total catastrophe, at least not for me. On the other hand, I believe that it leaves some cheap chips on the table. Most people do probably get more out of life if they have some routine because it allows them to do things that they want to do.

The next paradigm was me going somewhat overboard with routines. There is such a thing as too much routine. It makes you fragile because you need to adapt them to a changing environment (an environment that isn't changing is dead). Every variation becomes an annoyance and a problem because it is a blocker for a routine. For me, my routine behavior probably reached its climax during COVID, when environments become their most static, predictable, dead. But what to do when traveling burdened by routine? I was trying to impose my way of life on a changing environment. It takes all the magic out of it. It makes everything around the trip a problem because routine needs to somehow be squeezed in. Instead, the way to extract the best from a new environment is to be open-minded and flexible. Bend don't break, as they say in yoga.

Now, I have come to treat routine as something different, slightly softer. My routines are my preferred default in circumstances under my control. I happily acknowledge when that is not the case and adapt to that. But routines are not something that I swear by.

The thing about a routine is that they are the most powerful when (and this is the case for most things in life) the importance of what you are doing lies not in you doing it once, but many times. So it should not be an issue to skip a day. The value lies in the routine itself, and that one returns to it.

Some of my routines I have kept for many years now, but I have no problem deviating from them occasionally. But by being stricter at the beginning, I have given the routine space to grow, making it stronger. After such a long time, I can deviate from it and know that I will find my way back. The routine is there when I need it. I am not enslaved to my routines. On the contrary, they are there to serve me when I need them. When the environment is right for my preferred default, I know that my routines are there.