096: Routine
[Before - Session 03] Looking in the mirror for a moment
I have said I hate routine.
My wife chalks that up to my “zero to one” preference for chaos and improvisation. She is not wrong. There’s a reason I favor entrepreneurial environments, and don’t hold down a job focused on the minutiae of incremental improvements.
I’ve also been sober for almost 13 years.
That routine could more easily be ascribed to the logic of removing pain and suffering from life. Or what my friends on the shining path call a wise preference for “no end to better.”
Yet, nature seeks balance as my first art director partner used to remind me. Which is a way of acknowledging I can’t stubbornly resist routine and hope to get anything done.
Two weeks ago I couldn’t really get out of bed. Sitting and standing were both really uncomfortable. And I had no incident to point at, or clear source for what was obviously a lower back issue. Well, except for I hate routine. And exercise. But gosh golly gee—would you look what a handful of 8-10 minute daily sessions of Cat/Cow, McGill Crunch (which isn’t really a crunch?), Side Plank and Bird Dog can accomplish? No more pain. Lots more flexibility. And a good laugh at my own human resistance and fragility.
(But please check back in with me in a couple months. Let’s see if this particular routine sticks.)
A few years back I attended Seth Godin’s altMBA program. 30 days of intense, long hours with other amazing humans, generating roughly 27 distinct writing assignments. Can’t recommend it highly enough. The first assignment focused on setting goals. You can see where this might be heading. I posted a reflection to my cohort:
So many of the barriers and challenges I uncovered in defining my goals centered around the necessity of some form of routine.
All this to say I now take a perverse comfort in blocking time in calendars, scrawling cryptic instruction on the smallest of Post-It Notes (the best size, frankly), and especially crunching up said Notes when I’m done. Also, in occasionally blowing deadlines and working until 3:00 a.m. I am no organizational dynamo like all you Asana nerds.
The business of being a creative person is oddly rooted in a necessary blend of chaos and routine.
Tomorrow the AI for Artists and Entrepreneurs class is going to dive into generative text tools, and on Tuesday the Persuasion & Marketing course moves up about a thousand years to evaluate how religion, the printing press and the shift from rural to urban societies, and even maritime growth encompassed and influenced human persuasion.