Relax your habits

Last week, I spent 2 hours creating a "knowledge capture habit."

I wanted to be able to shake my phone and have it record my voice and save the thought into my "knowledge capture system" for processing later - all automatically.

Was working on my "capture habit" more comfortable than actually writing? 100%

Was it more helpful to my writing than just sitting down and writing for 2 hours instead? No.

Just because being a "systems-thinker" sounds good on a resume doesn't mean it's good human skill.

Here's 3 reasons to loosen up on a habits-driven life:

1. Habits are Anti-Mindfulness

Habits are antithetical to mindfulness.

It's great to have habits for things you want to get through as efficiently as possible - but "life" shouldn't fall into that bucket.

If you're an ambitious person, systems and habits have probably been your friend - you've achieved some great things with them.

But the perfect systems and habits won't bring relaxation and present moment awareness. A life that churns along as a series of habits strung together is a life that puts your direct experience in the back seat.

The habits we create can quickly become a prison of our own making - fortifying thick walls between ourselves and the people/world around us. If you've ever felt like someone saying "hello" was ruining your routine (*raises hand*), then you know what I'm talking about.

2. Habits ruin fun

Habits remove tension.

If you're an anxious leaning introvert, 0 tension probably sounds great. It can be - but when you remove all tension from life, you remove fun along with it.

Board game designer Bastiaan Reinink knows the importance of tension in designing fun games:

You wouldn't use weighted dice to play Yahtzee, hoping to roll all 6's every time. The game would lose it's fun.

Of course, it's harder to surrender to uncertainty in real life, where the stakes are higher than Yahtzee, but there's immense joy right on the other side of being more open to randomness.

You have direct proof of this:

If you think back to your most joyful, memorable moments of the last year, they likely happened outside of your routines and systems. They might have even interrupted one of your systems.

I love this quote from Nick Milo about how a perfect system can be a fun-sucker:

3. Habits are too rigid

Modern life has removed us from nature's rhythms.

In one of my favorite articles about the seasonality of work, Chris Lawton says

He goes on to suggest that we loosen our grip on habits and routines, especially at the changing of seasons.

You might hunker down for a sprint of work in the Fall, then sleep longer/spend time with family in the Winter, then go outside and explore more in the Spring.

But typical habits and system's don't account for seasons.

On an individual level, rigid habits separate us from nature, leaving us in a heightened, out of balance state, where our bodies know something isn't right, even if our brains can't put the words to it.

On a societal level, our habit obsession is a Procrustean Bed where we measure success, happiness, and fulfillment by arbitrary standards like "how much work you got done today".

The result: We try to fit people into systems that aren't people-shaped.

What to do instead

I'm not suggesting we abandon our habits. Habits are wonderful for efficiently getting through the parts of life that lend themselves to "getting through".

In his article called systems vs life, author Oliver Burkeman proposes this litmus test for when to use systems:

Knowing when a system is "heightening the feeling of aliveness" requires a certain level of present moment awareness. "How am I feeling as this system I've created plays out?"

The immediately useful advice here, though, is to "call off the search for the perfect system".

Settle for a good enough morning routine. A good enough task management system. A good enough calendar.

Here's something practical I've been doing to "un-habit" myself and start re-engage with flow/randomness/nature:

Instead of strict habits, I think in terms of buckets.

A 20 minute bucket in the AM to prepare for the day.

A 20 minute bucket in the PM to wind down.

What goes in those buckets can shift depending on the season, my mood, or whatever strikes me as important in the moment.

Some potential activities for each bucket:

AM Bucket:

• Walk

• Write

• Journal

• Meditate

• Breathwork

• HIIT workout

• Listen to Podcast

PM Bucket:

• Stretch

• Journal

• Yoga

• Sip tea

• Take a bath

• Read fiction

• Intentional breathing

I don't worry about being consistent with any specific habit or designing a perfect system - but I am consistent with the buckets.

And as soon as anything in the buckets ceases to "heighten my feeling of aliveness", I'll abandon it without guilt.