From Chaos to Clarity: The Impact of Routines

I get it. Routines are boring and seem to take any sliver of excitement from your life. However, our lives are filled with unpredictability and distractions in the modern world, and that is strengthening the case for routines. Whether it’s waking up at the same time, setting aside time for exercise, or dedicating hours to study, routines help us prioritize what truly matters while minimizing decision fatigue. Now, let’s look at specific aspects of routines that make it necessary to the betterment of our lives.

Firstly, routines build momentum. Let’s look at it with a simple example. Let’s say, to combat anxiety, you click a pen during exams. You start it intentionally, but by the end of the last exam, it’s involuntary and spontaneous and when you’re thinking deeply about a question, your hand naturally just clicks the pen. This habit building works exactly the same way on a bigger scale too. When you decide to read a book at 7.30 or half an hour before bedtime and follow it on a regular basis, you will feel accustomed to that habit in a few days, depending on the level of interest you have on that habit, and reading a book is no longer a strenuous task but a daily habit that you follow without thinking. 

Secondly, it helps with your mental wellbeing. I have talked about this before; decisions cause the biggest stress in humans. A predictable schedule will drastically reduce the anxiety of the chaotic decision-making structure. I know you might be thinking that this is exactly like time-blocking, and I’m just rephrasing it. However, despite overlaps, time blocking strictly applies to productivity while routines apply to all aspects and are like the general coating everyone must do. Routines include not only time, but sequence of tasks. For example, a morning routine would be waking up and taking a shower while brushing your teeth at the same time. That would be a routine, not time-blocking. Where it would overlap is when you decide that you’re going to wake up at 7.00 everyday and get out of the bathroom at 7.20. That might be walking into time-blocking territory. Another key difference is routines is a set of tasks you repeat everyday at the same time, whereas you time-block according to the number of tasks you have.

A well-established routine is like a well-composed symphony; each instrument knows what its doing and doing it harmoniously.