Very tempting to stay here all day, isn’t it? Or maybe this is her job? Photo by THE 5TH on Unsplash
Beware the Juice
I get plagued a lot with indecision in terms of my routine. Do I work I better in the mornings or the evenings? Do I need exercise in the morning? Should I meditate? I often find when I get up I just want to shower, make a cup of tea, and get to work. Sometimes I can’t wait to get out of bed and get started. Others, I need something to wake me up. A coffee, a walk, some journaling. Some days I sit to write at 8am and don’t stop until dinner time. Others, I spend all day scattered and unfocused, switching between 15 different tabs and tasks teas and not getting very far with any of them.
I told myself for ages that I needed to exercise in the morning, that it wakes me up and inspires me to be my most creative and focused and productive and happy. And it does, some days. It’s great for waking you up and making you mentally alert, while simultaneously relaxing you. But other days I get up and go for an early run and when I get home I’m too tired to do anything. The energy I had was already there. I just didn’t pay attention to it and then went out and wasted it. Because of my ‘routine’.
I’ve learned over the last while that being a slave to routine can be the ultimate in procrastination. Telling yourself you ‘need’ to exercise, need to meditate, need to journal, need to have a healthy breakfast, need to have a cup of coffee, need to make a smoothie, need to hit snooze on the alarm, need to go back to bed – and so on – before you can get going in the morning. Two hours go by and you’re still going through your routine, supposedly to create the perfect You for working, but in reality you’re just making excuses. In our house, we call it ‘juicing’ – ritual smoothie-making, self-development as an occupation in lieu of doing the thing actual thing you’re supposed to be doing.
Sometimes You Need to Mix it Up
Most of the time, you don’t need anything. You just need to work. But other days, you try to work, and it just doesn’t come. It’s all well and good saying “JUST DO THE WORK” or “ATTACK THE DAY” or “SUCK IT UP” or any other variation of that kind of ‘Stop-being-a-bitch’ line of motivational speaking and writing, but like the routine, or like the things in the routine, they only work some of the time. Others, they don’t. I’ve spent days on end of my life staring at screens and desperately trying to will myself into doing the thing I’m supposed to be doing, both personal tasks and full-on jobs. Sometimes you just… can’t.
Sometimes I work best at night, like I’ve worked myself into peak performance by slogging through the day. Maybe some day I’ll be sitting down with Tim Ferriss and explaining to him my ‘perfect routine’ of writing til noon, then taking an 8 hour lunch break – which includes lunch, meeting friends for coffee, a walk, a long nap, a snack, a run, a cup of tea watching the football, and finally dinner – before getting back to work from about half 8 until bedtime, and he’ll choke on his Brain Hacking Energy Juice which makes him 15% more productive with only 8% more laxative.
Routines are great, but often they’re great for making you do things you don’t want to do. Some days you’ll get out of bed full of ideas and creative energy. On those days it’s best to just get to work. Don’t spend it all running five miles or doing pull-ups. Movement can inspire you and energise you but it’s not always necessary. This is why it’s important to check in with how you’re feeling in the mornings – it can be a good intention for morning meditation.
Check in with Yourself
If you don’t have time or patience to meditate in the morning – sometimes I do just want to get to work – it can be good practice just to ask yourself in the morning: what do I need to do to wake up? If the answer is nothing, happy days. Sometimes a walk would be nice, sometimes you might need something stronger. Some days you don’t feel like doing anything, and just need a coffee to power you through a few hours til you can get home and go back to bed. That’s fine as well.
But it’s good to know how you’ll react to it. Even as I write this article, despite the fact that I feel energised, motivated, curious and satisfied with what I’m writing, I’ve to stop myself from going for a walk “because it’ll wake me up/inspire me/get my creative juices flowing/etc.” I know I could come back and be tired, my mood shifted, more interested in spending further time walking about town than doing my work. Sometimes you do just need to take a look at yourself and do the bloody work.
The other day I spent the morning in a flustered daze. I had things to do and emails to send and articles to write and I’d no concentration for the work and no inspiration or motivation for the writing. I tried everything: forcing myself to do the work, doing the work badly, meditation, coffee, tea, lunch, a nap, a stretch, journaling, even ‘getting all my scrolling out of my system’. Nothing worked. Eventually, I went for a swim after lunch. It tired me out, but it also relaxed me. When I got home I sat down and did everything I’d been putting off all morning in just two hours before dinner.
Move it or Lose it
You mightn’t have the time or freedom to go for a swim. It doesn’t matter. On a different day, it could have been any of the others above. The nap, the walk, the lunch, the stretch, the ten minutes of sitting and doing nothing, the scrolling. Sitting is the new smoking, as they say. Though I think that one’s been a cliché for about five years already. Maybe scrolling is the new sitting.
It’s true though. If you’re sitting down all day, it’s going to destroy your metabolism and your joints. Not to mention your mental health. Especially if you’re working from home now, typing on stolen kitchen tables and breakfast-bar stools and so on. Get up and go outside and shake yourself off. As someone who exercises almost every day, I firmly believe at this stage that your priority should be just moving as much as you can throughout the day, before you go thinking about workouts. If I’d to choose only one to do every day for the rest of the year between ‘a workout’ or ‘a walk’, I’d pick the walk. Walk as much as you can. Like, an hour a day or something.
Why Am I Doing This?
We are creatures of movement and entropy. Stagnation is death. And even the healthiest of components of a daily routine can stagnate if we don’t change them now and again. Rearrange the order. Our energy ebbs and flows throughout the day. And it changes from day to day, season to season. The weather changes, the days get longer and shorter, the leaves die and fall from the tree. So it goes. Better to go with it than to be stuck in a stagnant pool of stale Juice.
Routines are important. But if they’re not working, then it’s good to mix things up, take a break, get some exercise, and clear your head, before getting back to whatever it is you wanted to do. But it’s important as well to take a step back and ask yourself that most useful question: why am I doing this?