Routine. The minute we hear this word, most of us think of pushing ourselves against our wish! It probably reminds you of that tyrannical ringing alarm that breaks your sweet dream or a night of sound sleep. Or dragging yourself through that unrealistic and stressful list of activities that you had decided to stack up one fine day when you were feeling like a superhuman! That, unfortunately, is what a stereotype of ‘routine’ is known to us.
But if the routine was so tyrannical and scheduling so stressful, why do almost all the successful people exercise their routines diligently? Do they just do it like robots and being cruel to themselves?
And most importantly, is routine an invention to torture ourselves? Or should we just discard the whole idea of a routine and instead do what it feels like at the moment? Let’s find the answers cogently.
The notion of Routine:
A routine doesn’t need an introduction. A stack of some activities that need to be done repeatedly over a period. Could be a daily or a weekly routine depending on the activities involved. The very first routines we had in childhood were almost always decided by our parents. These routines were often influenced by our realities and their schedules and lifestyles.
School at some point accelerated a need for a routine and sure enough, we got one soon. Those nightmarish mornings when we were made to get up early, get ready and go to school aren’t the best memories we have of childhood! And then we were caught up in more rigorous routines as we progressed the classes. The sports extra hour, that cultural meet twice every week. All these have portrayed having routines as a tyranny to us.
No wonder, we tend to flock more and more towards the ideas stating that the real freedom would be to have no more routines or ‘to-dos’ in daily life.
The whole point of a routine:
Cutting short to the point, the very reason why people have or at least create a routine is to do a few activities, that need to be done, to reach some destined goal in future. If the end goal is to maintain the cleanliness of your body, the routine set is to take a bath daily. If the goal is to run a full marathon one day, the routine would be to run about 5 days a week, increasing the distance and getting faster every week.
By now, you would have grasped the gist behind having routines. By the way, do they seem forced to you? The answer for this depends on the goals a person has.
If you have no plans of running a marathon, running many kilometres 5 days a week will represent a tyrannical routine for you. The minute someone else defines the routines for us and they don’t align with our goals, the routine becomes tyrannical. Also, the reason we found our childhood routines difficult is they weren’t created by us. But fair enough, we probably lacked the vision at that time and didn’t know what was good for us.
But now we can set our own goals and our routines! Want a certain level of fitness? You have to set up a fitness training routine to reach this level and maintain it. Do you want to excel in exams? Set the window of time you’d be only studying that subject 5 days a week. Desire the level of professional success/earning income? Practice that skill for some time every day. You get the point.
Sometimes, we try to practice the routines of others but it doesn’t last. And this happens very unknowingly. This is the reason, why it is very important to set clear goals and be consciously aware of the activities that you do daily.
A path to freedom or jail?
Now, the question comes up: What happens on those days when you want to do what you intend to do but can’t? Should one still press on anyway? The most straightforward answer would be, maybe a break doesn’t change a lot in the grand scheme of things. But a break every week would significantly change the possibility of you achieving your goals.
This is the real test of you to know whether the goal you set was your goal or just some wishful thinking. You can relax every once in a while, but otherwise prefer to push on. If it’s your goal, then you would notice the friction fading away. The struggle is always the hardest to get ready to go to the gym. Once you start working out, you feel good that you pressed on!
Contrary to the advice of doing what it feels in the moment, a doable routine well-aligned with your goals can make the goals a reality. And if you remember the times, you were the happiest, was the time when you had attained or achieved something that you had always valued.
In the grand scheme of things, a routine sets you free because, at the end of the day, you know that you have done all that should have been done.
So, the cogent advice would be to set your goals and the routines to reach them and well, stick to them!
