
Why you need both rituals and routines to power your workday - jorymackay
https://blog.rescuetime.com/workplace-routines-and-rituals/
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alfonsodev
An important realisation is that you already have a routine, it might not be
the optimal but you do have one. Even if you routine is "going to bed every
night a different hour", it is a routine. Not going to gym in the mornings, it
is a routine. Just have a look to your repeated behaviours, even if they are
variable, if the variability repeats then it is a pattern.

In other words it is useful to demystify the routine, and realise that you
already have one, you just need to adjust to make it more optimal.

In response to:

m1dnigh7: > I truly envy people with routines or rituals...

andrewflnr: > I hate that this might actually be true...

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mario0b1
This is basically what i learned in my 1 1/2 years oft psychotherapy. You
really have to ask yourself stuff like "what's wrong with my schedule?"

The answer could be something trivial like: "I waste too much time browsing
hacker news after work. I need to stop that!". But it's not easy to just stop
that. Better ask yourself a second question like: " what could I do instead?"
And then just find a tiny little thing you could improve. Every tiny step can
be a huge improvement

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andrewflnr
I hate that this might actually be true. I don't want routines or rituals, I
just want to do the smart thing at any given second. Empirically, however,
that's not what actually happens.

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jolmg
Kind of makes me wonder if there are people that live without routines and
rituals, and what causes the transition to and from between living with and
without routines and rituals.

Can anyone give their experience on the matter?

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thatoneuser
I’m not anyone super important but this is how I’ve lived my life. Honestly it
feels chaotic. My mind is always running via executive control. In some ways
this, I believe, has provided me with a very unique worldview where anything
seems possible - any path is within my grasp. I think it has led me to be more
(forgive the possible arrogance, it’s not intended as such) intelligent than
the average bear. I don’t let many facts into my mind without intense scrutiny
and I tend to have a much more complete high level picture of how things work.
In fact, I realized these traits early in life and believed they were
something I should pursue to be more effective. Which in many ways has come
true.

However the down side is that you’re incompatible with most other people. I
dread routine to the point where ive lost relationships and a sense of purpose
in most work. Being a cog is extremely unpleasant and it’s more and more
apparent to me that that’s where most success in the world comes from (think
millions of workers vs a single ceo.)

This article touched on all of that and I think I need to incorporate the
routine and ritual more. Even if it’s so I can just get through the parts of
life I currently struggle.

Sorry if this is a bit rambling. I’m working now but wanted to share. If you
have any questions or want to chat I’d be happy. Still not sure how hacker
news replying and all works so my apologies if I miss you.

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seer
Maybe not as pronounced as in your case but I can definitly understand where
you’re comming from. What worked for me was trying to understand some martial
arts / eastern spirituality, which brought a lot of peace and stability to my
mind.

I remeber being tald about all the spiritual things that seem bonkers to a
western educated mind, but with the idea that - all models are false, some
models are useful, I just “tried” to imagine it working, and it actually did,
the mind is an interresting thing.

Now whenever I am presented with those ancient patterns of thought I don’t
dismiss them outright as false, but think of them as a model that can
influence your emotions, and act accordingly.

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eksemplar
I always found it rather interesting how similar Buddhism is to Christian, and
how different they are typically taught.

The teaching of Jesus and Buddha are really giving you the exact same advice.
Self-sacrifice, honesty, hard work and being decent while you accept all the
shit life throws at you and let it pass, because it will, are the ways to live
calmly and fully in between the eternal struggle chaos and order.

I personally think the eastern approach was easier to comprehend than the
western. Ying and yang are two dragons locked in eternal struggle, one is
chaos one is order but within each dragon is a small piece of the other. Let
too much of one dragon into your life and you will suffer, and since chaos
lives within order (and vice versa) it’s also a fruitless struggle to chose
one, because the other will always find a way to creep in.

You’ll find the same essence in the bible and the moral struggle between good
and evil and a God who never tells you what he wants, but to me, it was much
less clear. Perhaps especially because 90% of religions scholars are assholes
and in the west you don’t meet the eastern assholes but you do meet a lot of
shitty priests.

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bencollier49
Interesting comment. I think if you were to read one of the gospels you'd
pretty quickly get instructions on what God wants:

1\. Love God

2\. Love other people as much as you love yourself.

You'll find the second one in Buddhism, but not really the first.

That makes rather a lot of difference, because it focuses someone on being
grateful for the world, rather than attempting to ignore it.

~~~
mikekchar
I'm not a Buddhist, but I think you've got that completely backwards. For
example, the 5 moral precepts in Buddhism are refrain from: harming living
things, taking what is not given, sexual misconduct, lying or gossip, taking
intoxicating substances eg drugs or drink. No mention of god anywhere. As far
as I can tell, in many (most? all?) sects of Buddhism there _is no god_.
Buddha is just the first fully enlightened being (and in many sects, it's
achievable by anyone -- eventually).

As there is no dogma in Buddhism, it's really difficult to casually learn what
Buddhism is about. Usually people will throw a hundred books at you and say,
"Well, that will get you started" (at least in my experience :-) ). However, I
think you may have gotten the wrong end of the stick.

~~~
bencollier49
So my comment was stating that the bit about God wasn't in Buddhism, and your
comment affirmed that. I think we are arguing the same point.

Certain of the Buddhist sects and practices (notably Vajrayāna) throw gods
into the mix because they've incorporated local beliefs and culture.

~~~
mikekchar
Good grief. I'm dyslexic, but that's amazing even for me! Sorry about that!

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m1dnigh7
I truly envy people with routines or rituals. I have tried the simplest ones,
and none of them stick. I've been frustrated by this for a long time now. I
see people having routines and being more productive and it makes me almost
sad.

I think you need to be a special kind of person to have them.

~~~
lazyasciiart
On the contrary, I think it would be very unusual to be a person with no
routines. Perhaps you mean specifically 'routines that help with
productivity'?

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m1dnigh7
Ah, fair enough. The only real routine I have is "make coffee, kiss wife,
watch rerun of the evening news". And that's about it.

So yes, I have no productivity-helping routines.

Some of the ones I tried in a lot of different ways are time management
(pomodoro, toggl, ..), activity logging (toggl, todoist, paper book, ..),
waking up and going to bed on fixed hours, remembering thinks (google keep,
evernote, paper book,..) and all of them fade away after less than 5 days.

~~~
mockingbirdy
The conscious part of the human mind is basically a justification system. It
exists to justify actions so that they become socially acceptable through
rationalizations (this statement stems from this hypothesis: [1]).

After understanding this it's clear to see that your motivation is simply too
low - there's not a reason that is important enough for you. That means you
don't really feel the need to change your behaviour. It's a good sign - you
are content with yourself and don't fear the social repercussions of your
current behaviour to change anything about it - but it also means that you
stagnate.

You'll change your behaviour if you have the fear that you could lose social
status.

It seems that you try to control your behaviour through rational thinking. But
please understand that this is not how the brain operates. It first and
foremost wants to be socially accepted while minimizing energy consumption
(with bursts of curiosity). If you want to use rational thinking for your
behaviour, you have to add a value in your belief system that rational
thinking leads to the best decision. This also has to be associated with
emotions and you need some memories and stories where rational behaviour was
advantageous to back this belief up. Change other parts of your belief system
to make it injustifiable to yourself to live with unproductive routines. I
have to admit that I'm not sure if this will lead you to happiness/fulfillment
(pretty sure it won't if you're currently happy and fulfilled with your
current beliefs), but that's how you change behaviour.

[1]:
[https://unifiedtheoryofpsychology.files.wordpress.com/2011/1...](https://unifiedtheoryofpsychology.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/the-
justification-hypothesis.pdf)

Maybe you find value in this article about habit-building with some
psychological underpinnings: [https://jamesclear.com/three-steps-habit-
change](https://jamesclear.com/three-steps-habit-change)

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carlospwk
I’m jealous at Churchill’s 5:00pm nap. I’d be much happier and productive if I
could decide my working hours.

~~~
1996
Time to start a company?

~~~
mikekchar
Don't have to get so extreme. I work remotely in a _very_ different timezone
from my peers. It has its ups and downs, but one of the ups is that I can have
a nap pretty much any time I want (and frequently do). There aren't huge
numbers of jobs like this, and it requires a fair amount of practice to do
well (in my experience), but it's getting more popular.

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thisisit
For people struggling with forming a productive ritual/routine, you guys
should try BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits:

[https://www.tinyhabits.com/](https://www.tinyhabits.com/)

I went through the 5-day program this week and it seems to help a lot.

