Knowhere | Generalize Your Routine

Recently, a fitness influencer that I follow had posted this on Instagram

And strangely enough, over the years I’ve grown to feel exactly the same way.

This might appear rather bizarre to anyone who knows me personally, because I’m the type of person that thrives on variety, spontaneity and the uncertainty of adventure. I, for one, was rather confused with myself when I found that I was enjoying treading between routine and unpredictability.

Now, one might attribute this to the simple passage of time - that as we age, we mature to prefer the safety of the predictable.
While probably true in part, I found that I had not diminished my impulse for adventure; in fact, that impulse probably grew because of the structure that routine had brought.

In trying to figure out why, I realized that routine and spontaneity can coexist if they operate at different levels of generalization.
See, I have routine for a few, rather generic, categories of things that I spend my time on - i.e. work, health, household maintenance, self-grooming, social connections, exploration, and a couple others.
I will endeavor to complete tasks related to these categories on the regular.
For example, I go to work every weekday.
For my health, I try to do some active exercise at least every second day.
Once a week, I aim to complete at least one ‘exploration’ activity - where I explore some new place or have some novel experience.
These broad categories are things that I have committed to do at some particular cadence.

The spontaneity arises in the specific execution of these things, each time I do them.
Yes, I ‘work’ every weekday. But no two days are ever the same at work. There are heaps of new challenges, strange problems, novel tasks and interesting engagements all the time. There’s a sense of adventurousness in the dissimilarity of each workday. You never know what you’re going to get dealt tomorrow.
When it comes to exercise, I might go to the gym or run, depending on how I feel and how that day’s schedule pans out. I may, on a whim, decide to hike on a random Tuesday afternoon instead (a particularly memorable event where I added to my ever-growing count of ankle injuries).
No weekend should go past without exploring something new - maybe I’d visit a new coffee shop, trek through some virtual world on a new PlayStation game, watch a theatrical production I haven’t seen before, or hike a newfound trail - but precisely what that thing might be next weekend I couldn’t tell you now.

Knowing the generalized, finite set of things that you want your life to be made up of, helps shift your attention away from constantly trying to find the next thing to do to get ‘the most out of life’. It buys you peace, and it buys you freedom.
Each general category contains an infinite pool of diverse possibilities to act on for each iteration. So, in the routine, you will paradoxically find spontaneity and adventure.
The challenging part is figuring out what you want your general categories to be;
figuring out what is important to you.

Thanks for reading
Delano

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