Routine – a source of excellence OR absent-mindedness?

Routine activities are supposed to make our life easy, yet they often work against us. A routine action is like a coin: it has two sides. It can be your friend or foe.

In order to succeed in life, we need capacities that sometimes require completely opposite approaches:

(i) the skill to effectively establish routines and be able to commit ourselves to them;
(ii) the flexibility to act wisely when routine actions fail, in order to control the situation.

Routine actions may lead to excellence OR catastrophe

When someone is really good at something – an excellent dentist providing outstanding treatment or a knowledgeable accountant advising his clients on financial matters – they are not just experienced and up-to-date in their profession, but they also tend to act quickly. Most of the time out of routine.

And this is exactly what may lead to problems. If – for some unexpected reason beyond our control – circumstances change, acting out of routine may turn out to be an obstacle rather than a useful tool.

One tragically sad example is the deadly explosion at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the former Soviet Union.

Plants like this all over the world are equipped with safety apparatus for emergency cases. Shortly before the explosion, the engineers working at Chernobyl had performed a test which fundamentally altered operational conditions in the plant. As a result, the routine safety procedure which was supposed to reduce the power plant’s output had eventually led to the exact opposite: an enormous explosion.

To notice when circumstances have changed, and to know how to adopt to these changes can be crucial for survival and most definitely for success.

But where do most of our routine actions come from?

We usually adopt them in childhood. Family members, relatives and friends have a strong impact on our human interactions. But what if these relations are no longer the same? When what we have learnt as a child is no longer valid?

Adaption

If, for a mysterious reason, you were to wake up tomorrow morning in a strange country, you would definitely have a hard time finding your way around. All of a sudden, you would be faced with new conditions, with new expectations at your workplace and from the local society. Adaptation would be your key to survival.

In this particular case, your new environment would probably help your integration process so there would be no need for completely new strategies on your part. But there are instances when quick action is required in a way different than before.

Good routines are easily acquired from good environments.

Mindfulness at times of change

Fostering mindfulness can help you realize the multitude of choices you have in responding to life’s events.

By deliberately attending to and becoming more aware of your experiences (thoughts, feelings, body sensations) you will be able to perceive these more clearly at the moment they occur, without the usual urge to react in an automatic or habitual way.

We can’t always choose what happens to us or how other people behave, but we can learn to have more choice in how we respond to life’s events.

Mindful living can help you remain steady through life’s ups and downs so that experiences do not overwhelm you. At the same time, it gives rise to enormous creativity as you develop a new relationship with the conditions you find yourself in.

There are various forms of mindfulness practices – both formal and informal – to teach you how to recognize when the automatic tendencies of the mind begin to take over. In general, the formal practices are techniques that teach you how to check in, while the informal mindful activities represent ways to extend that learning into everyday life.

Whichever you start with, they take quite some time to be consolidated and successfully built into your daily routine (and daily routines of this kind will certainly never make you absent-minded.)