Practices are the New Routines
Routines. Love them or hate them. I hold both feelings.
I love them in theory. In reality, they tend to fail me.
If you have a routine and it is paired with little motivation, procrastination is likely to set in. Pair it with a neuro-divergent brain, and routine resistance triples. Recently I talked about my new practice of nature journaling with watercolors to kick me out when I find myself procrastinating. And going out for a walk when I feel blocked and want to procrastinate.
The failure of routines then isn’t about a lack of structure or a plan. Actually when I don’t have a plan going into the week, it will likely trigger some anxiety or overwhelm. That’s counterproductive for sure.
Instead I want to present the idea that practices are the new routines.
Here’s what I mean by practices.
Practices are behaviors you choose and engage in to support your goals or intention, especially when paired with change or personal development.
Typically we are used to the idea of practice being a verb where you do x over and over with the goal of improvement. That idea of practice feels very capitalistic, product/output-orientated and that’s not my vibe at all here. I mean, maybe you get better at something but that’s not the explicit goal. It also feels very perfectionism and shame triggering. And besides, better is so subjective.
When I talk about practice, I think of it as choosing to engage in a practice or you practice a specific tool and that’s your practice.
I love supportive and spacious structure in my calendar - time blocks paired with tasks. A weekly priority list of tasks including my creativity needs – such as time for ideation (brainstorming, reflecting, journaling, walking) is different than expansion (reading, studying, exploring new theories/research, connecting ideas) and those are different than intentional creation (coloring, painting, music, writing for output).
My creativity practice includes practices of time blocking for morning pages (free journaling), expansion (reading non-fiction books of interest), and intentional creation (right now it’s nature journaling).
All of this supports practice rather than routine because:
It is a creativity practice because I’ve made it a priority in my weeks.
Because it is a priority, I use my calendar to block time rather than a routine of x must happen at y time each day. It is much more flexible than that because a creativity practice relies upon energy and capacity. It’s a commitment but not forced.
I am choosing to engage in behaviors that advance those practices, and I’m doing it with a growth mindset. (Hence it being a practice.)
Clear as mud, right?
Practices move you more towards creating a habit rather than a rigid routine.
When you have a habit, you can choose to pause if you need to (you get sick, you travel, etc.), but you can always come back to it. When you have a habit that you’re motivated to do, and then you do it, the dopamine hit reward helps the brain want to do it again.
What I have found for myself and clients, when we approach change or personal development of any kind with a routine mindset there’s greater chance of failure because we can’t create change with willpower alone. Our egos/brains are more likely to read that failure as a personal failure but we didn’t set ourselves up for success. So it was the approach not the person.
The other big piece is that a practice feels more motivating because you’re choosing it. Routines, based on most of our conditioning from education and parents, feel more forced upon us. Most routine direction or advice we received came as a one size fits all. If that’s worked for you, awesome, keep on, keeping on.
If not, then consider this approach:
Identify your priorities
Then identify which practices will support those priorities
Connect those with the types of time needed
Block out the time (but schedule more than you think because humans are notorious at overestimating how much they can do in a set amount of time)
Evaluate if your weekly time blocks are dominated by any one type of task (e.g., is there too much administrative/management time when you prioritized writing?)
If you’re not sure about what practices, here are some examples I’ve talked about lately:
Morning pages as a journaling practice to clear my overthinking brain in the morning.
My 4 step process for moving through reflection to action.
Embodiment as a daily reconnection practice and invitation into grounded, intentional movement and being in my body.
Expanded creativity practices to help you discover a deeper creative flow.