Last year I put on my list of intentions to develop and maintain some new habit stacks. It didn’t go well. By mid-year I’d called time on this intention and given the whole endeavour away. I certainly hadn’t bought into that intention, hence the lack of progress. I don’t regret nixing it at the time but since then, I’ve been challenged by a number of things I’ve read.

The first was last September, a post by Alan Jacobs, which had a small paragraph that, while not about building routines, was tangentially related.

“Obedience is both difficult and boring; and the boring part is especially challenging in our neophilic age, in which we cannot readily perceive the renewing power of repetition. It’s no wonder that people would rather think about plans and strategies than to strive to practice obedience.”

Alan Jacobs, Repetition and Summation, The Homebound Symphony

Then in February, I was once again challenged in this area by his quoting of Chesterton which I promptly went and looked up:

For the variation in human affairs is generally brought into them, not by life, but by death; by the dying down or breaking off of their strength or desire. A man varies his movements because of some slight element of failure or fatigue. He gets into an omnibus because he is tired of walking; or he walks because he is tired of sitting still. But if his life and joy were so gigantic that he never tired of going to Islington, he might go to Islington as regularly as the Thames goes to Sheerness. The very speed and ecstacy of his life would have the stillness of death. The sun rises every morning. I do not rise every morning; but the variation is due not to my activity, but to my inaction. Now, to put the matter in a popular phrase, it might be true that the sun rises regularly because he never gets tired of rising. His routine might be due, not to a lifelessness, but to a rush of life. The thing I mean can be seen, for instance, in children, when they find some game or joke that they specially enjoy. A child kicks his legs rhythmically through excess, not absence, of life. Because children have abounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again”; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again” to the sun; and every evening, “Do it again” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we. 

Orthodoxy, G.K. Chesterton

Maybe I’d been looking at routine and repetition all wrong? Routines are often presented as a bedrock in efficient productivity, which is fine as it goes, but I am not a machine to be measured by my efficiency and productivity. In fact, I’m actively trying to push back against that mindset, which is one reason why I was not especially sad to drop the whole thing, but these posts got me thinking that maybe my struggles point to something in me that needs to be examined and dealt with. My current work setup and family commitments don’t force much routine onto my life, but I suspected I needed another go at the discipline of routines.

I promptly forgot about the subject and continued on with my life. A few months went by, and the topic was raised again by Austin Kleon, who followed these posts with his thoughts on the “joy in repetition”.

There seems to me to be a repetition that is generative and a repetition that is deadening. And part of our job as creative people is to figure out whether our repetitions are giving us energy or sapping us. Birthing new things or killing the spirit.

Joy in Repetition Austin Kleon

My word of the year is working to focus my attention on the inspiration I come across that will help me on my way to renewal. I needed these reminders to remember that our habits and routines, the actions we take repeatedly, have the power to form us. They are probably the most powerful way to make our values concrete, but routines and rituals can be life-giving or life-draining.

With this in mind, I decided to give routines another chance in my life, for real, this time. To give myself every chance of success, I was very careful to give myself time to work on it and try out different things to find out what would stick. To start and restart, and accept that migraine days warrant a pass but don’t need to derail me from picking up where I left off. I have a regular bedtime routine that happens almost every night I’m home, so I can do routines. Around April, after trying several different strategies for making my bible-in-a-year readings stick in my routine, I finally settled on doing them before I actually get out of bed. Sometimes I need to get up and use the bathroom beforehand, but I never leave our bedroom area, which means I can’t get derailed before I’m done. Before I start my reading, I write out a prayer in my journal, always the same short prayer, that sets my intention and attention for the time to come. Afterwards, I read a prayer from my prayer book, and I’m done. Would I like it to be more? Of course. But this time? Every morning, it’s adding up. Sometimes, it feels dry, and sometimes, I cover the page of my journal in notes, but this repetition every morning feels like renewal.

I have high hopes of bringing more renewing repetition into my life. Some things I need to keep in mind as I do …

• I am not a morning person.
• Perfection really is the enemy of the good. I love the idea of curling up in a comfy chair with my bible, journal and a hot drink, maybe lighting a candle and spending an hour with God, but for me, there are just too many ways this can be derailed. Better to keep it simple and do it every day.
• Don’t get stuck on thinking things must be done a certain way.

What are some of the things in your daily routines that you find life-giving? Do you easily fall into routines? Is there one thing you had to work hard to make routine in your life?