Rather Than a Routine
Conscious listening to our body and mind makes us more productive.
The past few months have been a roller-coaster of changes for me. I moved out of London, changed jobs, started freelancing, joined a co-working space, started van life… All in the middle of a pandemic. Now pubs are open again in the UK, which adds even more changes to my social life.
I praise myself for my extreme adaptivity. Not one time was I stressed about the flood of changes, in fact, my creativity, imagination and problem-solving skills have thrived. Why?
Because I have never lived with a routine. I embrace constant changes.
The truth about routines
A routine is for people who likes to have control over things.
Especially with morning routines, people prefer to auto-pilot their workout, meditation, breakfast, and grooming habits. They believe this maximizes their efficiency before they step out of their home to get to work.
Morning is a pretty powerful time, according to the circadian rhythm. In between 6 am and 10 am, our blood pressure, testosterone, and alert peak and transform my mind and body. It sets or breaks the rest of our day, technically.
Whilst auto-piloting can improve efficiency, it also takes away our ability to be in touch with ourselves consciously, with the universal rhythm, if I may.
If the routine can’t be executed for whatever reason, for example, my habit of reading on commute was completely stopped by the pandemic. Will people who love routines and control struggle to cope? I believe so.
And I believe many people are struggling with the pandemic mentally, but also with changes on the whole. Many people keep getting stuck in a toxic situation (from work to relationships), simply because they cannot cope with a change in routines and controlled life.
So, having a routine doesn’t always sound as good of a deal, does it?
We can’t control the external factors
The co-working space I have been going to is going through some hardcore construction work for two weeks so they’ve arranged for us to go to another co-working space.
This sucks.
This other space looks like those dingy internet cafes in Hollywood movies, where criminal activities definitely take place. It has no windows, obviously no decor, just Ikea desks, and very hard chairs. I am not digging it.
At first, I struggled a little bit to settle in; I like the original co-working space. It has artisan coffees, Lo-Fi music, plants, and sunlight, all the staples to uphold a millennial digital nomad lifestyle.
So many of us felt disoriented, our productivity reduces significantly. Some people even insist to go to the old place, put on earplugs and noise-canceling headphones, and continue to work there.
That obviously won’t work.
To the extent we can maintain our routine and habits (assuming they are good for us), that’s great. However, we should be completely comfortable with changes, and be ready that our external environment might force us to change and give up control at unexpected times.
By not trying to control the environment, we also ensure that the environment does not control us.
That’s why adapting through conscious listening is so important.
How to listen consciously and adapt to changes
Although I don’t like the new place, I also don’t have a routine. So here’s what I do to regain my productivity and adapt to a new environment, where old habits are shattered by environmental factors.
- Give ourselves 5 minutes: To adapt successfully, first, we must tune in to ‘adaptation’ mode. This means we have to take a bit of time to acknowledge our habits are on hold, and changes need to be made. Breathe, meditate, walk around, allow yourself to get ready for it.
- Name the first 5 things that you can see: When we feel disoriented or overwhelmed, conscious looking at the surroundings and name things we can see help to ground us. My new co-working space and the old ones have a lot of things in common (technically it’s all desk, chairs, wifi, and power sockets). This little exercise calms me down.
- Focus on the positive things: It’s not only about having gratitude but also focus on the things that are aiding our productive life. For example, I can complain the chair is too hard in this new office, but I can also praise the height of the chair is perfect.
- With this, improve your surrounding even more: Rather than complaining about the chair, I can now look around for softer office chairs that still has the same perfect height as my current chair. This is purely attitude transformation. This applies to every situation in life when changes are required: First, we see the positive sides of the changes, and then we seek to improve the new position with gratitude.
- Just observe: Sometimes life simply throws us completely upside down and it becomes impossible to see anything positive. In this case, I want to reassure you that positivities are always there and it’s only a matter of whether we can see it or not. It’s no one’s fault, just a matter of timing and perspective. If that’s how you feel at the moment, I would suggest prolonging action no.1 and observe/listen for a much longer time, until your anxiety level reduces. Going to nature helps too if that’s available to you.
I think it’s better if we don’t have a routine so that when shit hits the fan and changes are required, we adapt to it faster and more cheerfully.
One of the most fascinating books I’ve ever read is The Outsider (L’etranger) by Albert Camus. When I first read it, I was baffled by why the hero doesn’t seem to give a toss about anything that comes to him, positive and negative alike, it’s as if he is just observing his life happens like an outsider, a stranger.
The story of the hero (or anti-hero even) is very extreme, but over time, I resonate with the freedom experienced by the hero. Not being strangled by our own thoughts, perceptions, including our ‘success routines’, are what make us adaptive, relaxed, and free.
When we give up control, we become like water, molding ourselves according to the shape of the river, the pipe, or even the sea. This creates greater flexibility and agility, and from another perspective, even greater control of our lives than trying to control elements within our lives.
This level of freedom and life philosophy exists beyond the discussion of routine-forming, however, to pursue this level of almost-Buddhist-like freedom can start from how we adapt and be conscious of our habits, moods, emotions, and behavior.
I research write about self-development through building meaningful relationships with ourselves and others. Here are more articles from me:
