Why routines are critical
Oh, how easy it is to lose a habit. This is my 218th weekly blog post, but a couple of weeks ago I stopped caring about which day I should publish it. It used to be Mondays, almost without fault for a couple of years. And here I am, Sunday evening, in the final hours of this week before my habit is officially broken. It is interesting that these things always seem to gravitate towards “I’ll do it later”. But later usually never comes. Obviously, it can never work if you don’t follow a routine. Lesson learned.
A schedule is not your enemy. It cannot be, because it is you who decides what goes in it. The blog post is a good example. I had Mondays as my writing day. But in the past year I have felt it eating away on my sleep account. The weeks have been more intense in general. And that takes out the fun from the writing. It becomes more of a chore. The first year or so, I always wrote early Saturday mornings. Before the family woke up. That was good. But I eventually got sick of it and wanted to sleep together with my kids and wife. That time is invaluable and writing blog posts is simply not that important in comparison. It wasn’t worth it. I wanted to keep my weekends as free from cognitive chores as possible. That’s why I moved it to Mondays instead and managed to keep it up for quite a couple of years.
But as I mentioned, it started eating on my sleep account and wasn’t that pleasurable anymore. It is not sustainable. So, where do I go from here? To stop writing is not an option. It is a healthy and worthwhile exercise. The pen is mightier than the sword, as the saying goes. The first step is to find a new day. Here’s a cool thing I have noticed with these blog posts. By writing my problems, questions or thoughts down I often come up with a solution during the process. You probably recognize this phenomenon when talking to a friend about something that you are stuck with. And often, when explaining your problem to another person, the solution hits you like a hammer. This I have felt many times while writing. And today is no exception. Here's what I just realized.
Maybe a habit should be modified every now and then for optimal effect? There is no rule of nature that says that I must always write on Mondays or whatever. A modified approach could be to write Mondays for a year, then choose Tuesdays and so on. Just change it and see what happens. Also, it doesn’t have to be in the evening, like I have been doing for a very long time now. Maybe I should go back to those early morning writing sessions. Or try something completely different, Lunch sessions. Why not? As soon as you change the time you do a habit, you will gain new insight.
All is not negative, however. When I started to be less strict with my publishing consistency, I began writing the piece in Word one day. And then I uploaded it and chose a picture the next day. Break it into two. Such a simple change resulted in much less friction. With weekly writing, pre-loading works very well for me. To reduce pressure even further, one could write on Mondays and publish on Thursdays for example. Although it would obviously result in Wednesdays being the writing day before long. And soon thereafter, probably Thursdays for everything. Anyway. Let’s fix this habit again.
I shall henceforth publish on Thursdays. And the writing can be whenever, wherever.