As someone fired by creativity, when I was younger I was somewhat suspicious of habits and routines. I rather quickly realized that if one wants to be impactfully creative, one needs a schedule and a series of habits. There is only so much invention one can do in a day, and it is best to allocate that to the places where it matters. Every day at about the same time, I go to the gym. I don’t invent new exercises, I just follow a plan. Sure, I’ll graze Instagram for some crazy moves, but what works is repeating the same exercises every week.
The downside to habits is that we can become locked into them without question. This is something we need to guard against. Just because you have done something at the same time and the same place for a while, doesn’t mean you should be closed to some adjustments. Let’s not get grumpy when someone offers up some novel experience. We may like it. I tend to have the unpleasant habit of badly judging new people before I meet them. Embarrassing. Comically, I tend to go completely the other way when I actually talk to a new person.
The quandary is: How rigid should we be with our habitual routines, and how open to newness should we be? It’s really not that big of a deal. If in doubt, use the 80/20. Habit 80% of the time. I like to go to bed early and get up early. I also enjoy a raucous dinner party. Some mornings I will skip the gym. So what? It will be there tomorrow and so will I.
Onward and upward,
David