The Routine: Less Routine And More Creative
Routine is both an organizer and a computer in our lives. Yet the abuse of habits and rituals make life monotonous and colorless.
Creativity must be stimulated to ensure a healthy balance between routine and novelty. This seems to be the formula for activating our brain plasticity and living a healthier life.
Overwhelmed by the routine?
The word “routine”, as described in the Treccani dictionary, derives from the French route, “road”, and can be defined as that “way, rhythm of life and activity that is repeated day by day, substantially unchanged, with a sense of monotony”.
Thus, the development of a certain routine implies an action or a series of actions that become systematic over time, automatic; no reasoning or awareness intervenes in them.
The life of all human beings is extremely habitual. The development of programs of any kind, in fact, operates on the basis of the organization of the steps to be followed. This means that certain routines are planned to pursue goals.
This is true for weight loss diets, for gym class schedules, for a workout or for therapeutic programs aimed at drug addicts or alcoholics.
A program defines what can and cannot be done, as well as delineating and establishing boundaries: the actions to be taken, the sequence in which to carry them out, the minimum results to be achieved, the final objectives, the context in which it takes shape action, participants or time, among the many variables.
Repeated exercise of a program systematizes in a person’s life and becomes part of his daily routine if it is to be applied all day.
Work and routine
Work is one of the areas in which routine is most present. In the case of some human-operated serial production machinery, the routine is represented by a series of automatic movements that are lost awareness.
Yet these stereotypical actions have a margin of risk: a small distraction results in injuries to those who drive the movement of the machinery that cuts, twists and crushes.
The automatisms distract us and make us sleepy. We must take into account the fact that the brain does not store glucose, but uses it in 25% of the body’s energy expenditure. So, after an hour and a half or two hours, that fuel could have dispersed and symptoms of hypoglycemia could appear, with loss of control and attention, sleepiness, distraction, just to name a few. And the risk is right there!
Daily life is also characterized by a chain of routines that lead us to organize ourselves. Every day millions of people get up at a certain time (taking into account the fact that that specific time is associated with the beginning of the working day), shower, brush their teeth, plan what to wear, have breakfast (planning it), they head to the workplace (on foot, by train, by bus, by motorbike, by bicycle, by car), finally, they arrive at their destination.
Starting from this routine model, a series of rituals take shape that give color to the model itself : I have another coffee at the corner bar, I floss after having breakfast with cereals, I choose a specific perfume to depending on the day, etc.
The rituality of routine
Ritual is an important part of the routine. Rituals, like routine in general, are “calculators”. We are not talking about the “prince” ritualism, the one based on magical thinking and which involves the repetition of a certain action to obtain the desired result (for example, eating the same dish when my favorite team plays because “always wins when I do “).
We are not even talking about the pathological ritualism of obsessive-compulsive disorder, in which you always walk on the same tiles or wash your hands exactly 18 times. All these rituals are ruminating, tiring and have little to do with order and routine.
The health rituals
There are some healthy rituals that are part of a person’s general habits. For example, playing sports at a certain time, for a certain number of days a week, taking a free afternoon to get away from work or a Wednesday morning to read while sitting at our favorite bar.
Some of these rituals are encouraged in psychotherapy as tasks to be performed. We try to instill in the individual a habit that helps him to relax, to connect with well-being and with an activity that stimulates a pleasant sensation in him.
If the aforementioned ritual becomes a habit, then a small change takes place in the individual, which will produce others at a more noticeable rate, according to the domino effect. Habits and rituals, therefore, are the soldiers who defend routine.
However, it must be said that the routine does not enjoy a very good reputation. It is one of the dimensions of human life most often attacked, criticized and historically downgraded. It is usually associated with stiffness, apathy, boredom, or even worse, monotony.
Everything that is routine is considered the polar opposite of creativity, which is why holidays are perceived as the time to put aside the routine and embark on activities that we cannot do during the year due to work or other commitments.
Habit does not mean being a habit
Routine tells us that there is no need to invent anything new. If something works, we shouldn’t try to improve it! In some cases we try to refine or modify certain dynamics according to a mechanism that offers security, since it reduces surprises and unexpected events.
Still, this can lead to becoming habitual, because we abuse the routine. When a person becomes habitual he makes his life systematic to the point of excluding creativity. The ritualization and systematization of habits to the extreme make life tedious, monotonous and colorless.
Therefore, we should not criticize the routine itself, but “the routine of the routine”. This is what we could define as “being a habit”: the attitude that crushes creativity, ruining free time and that can lead – according to statistics relating to big cities – to depression, stress and suicide.
Routine can be a valuable ally
The advice is to become aware of that limit between healthy and extreme habit. Putting an end to certain habits can increase originality : changing certain passages, freeing ourselves from rigidity, and devising new programs by encouraging the act of getting used to it.
Abusing routine means insisting on the same paths traced by the neuroplastic networks. Activating them means creating and having new ideas that constitute new alternative paths to these networks: when we lose the excessive attachment to routine we create new paths that favor creativity and, of course, a healthy life.
