Habitual rituals

Our days are filled with all sorts of actions, many of which we don’t even think about. Some things, though, require a lot of thought, and some even carry special meaning for us. Taken together, all of three things—habits, routines, and rituals—create the structure on which we build our lives, and understanding them is important to successfully navigate the life we’ve created for ourselves. This is something I’ve only recently been able to understand.

I’ve spent the past few years trying to figure out who I am now that I’m a widower and life as I knew it, and assumed it would remain, ended. Over the past year, the past few months in particular, I’ve been trying to find ways to better organise my life and how I manage it in order to compensate for how my brain is wired, my physical and emotional realities, and, basically, anything that can affect how I get daily life done. That lead me to understand more about habits, routines, and rituals, and how they can be harnessed.

At the most basic level, the difference between habits, routines, and rituals in mainly about intent. Habits are completely or mostly automatic—we don’t have to think about the task. Routines can be at least partly automatic, but they ordinarily require specific triggers and conscious thought to complete. Rituals are the things we do to provide or amplify meaning in our lives.

Habits are difficult to form and can be problematic precisely because we’re usually on auto-pilot at the time. Most of us have probably seen some perky motivational speaker type of person tell us that all we have to do to turn something (like exercise, for example) into a habit is to do it regularly for a certain amount of time, maybe a few days, a week, a month, whatever (those perky people have different estimates of the time needed). However, as most of us have learned, real life doesn’t work that way, and we begin something earnestly with the intent to make it a habit, and then fail a day or more before we give up, blaming ourselves for being “bad” and “inferior” to the perky people who seem to adopt new habits with ease.

In reality, the things that probably matter most are the things we shouldn’t try to make into habits because being focused on the task at hand is important, and that means routines are more important that habits.

Here’s an example of what I mean. Like most people, I have a set routine for how I get ready in the morning, the specific things I do to wash and get dressed. Because it’s all habit, I’m often completely on auto-pilot—until I’m jolted back in to consciousness. Did I remember to wash my hair? Did I wash my whole body? I’ll sometimes repeat something because I have no idea if I’ve washed part of me. Then, I get our of the shower and put my watch and rings back on—wait, my watch is already unlocked—when did I tap in the password?!

None of those things have life-changing (or threatening) importance, but it’s a bit jolting to suddenly realise that I have no idea what I’ve just done—or not. Even if try to concentrate on the specific things I’m doing, my mind inevitably wanders and blind habit takes over.

Fortunately, most other things I do are done by conscious choice: What clothes I put on in the morning is something I’m always aware of because I make choices every step of the way. I put the same sorts of things on every day, but what I choose specifically always varies, and so, I’m always aware of what I choose. The same is true for meal preparation, doing the laundry, washing dishes—all of those routine activities have certain specific tasks done in a specific order, but never have I ever suddenly thought, wait, did I put laundry power in the washing machine? Or, did I hand wash those dishes with soap? Did I cut up that onion? All of those things are routines and require conscious choices.

Which isn’t to suggest that routines are immune from mistakes—nothing is. For example, I may forget to add an ingredient when I’m cooking, or I may forget to add it at the right time. However, that usually happens with recipes I make often enough that they’ve become partially habitual. Even so, I’ve never once been working a routine and suddenly realised I had no idea what I’d just done—habits alone do that.

The final part of this system is rituals, and they’re the most mindful of the three: We do them precisely because they’re mindful and related to meaning of some sort. For some people, that could be some sort of religious or spiritual routine, but that’s absolutely not necessary, and for me it has absolutely nothing to do with either.

My rituals are mainly about memory, either about my own life or how I’m connected to someone who has died, and they’re also mainly about making food. For example, I have a wooden spoon that was my mother’s, and she told me that it was only ever to be used for baking—never ordinary cooking—and to this day I use it only for baking, and think of her every time I use it. There are also certain meals I make that I used to make because Nigel really liked them, and I think of him as I prepare the meal and also when I eat it. Those routines become rituals because of the meaning that I attach to them. To anyone observing, they’d see me using a wooden spoon to make cookie dough (or whatever), or they might see me making a particular meal. To them, I’d just be doing a task, but for me, they’re surrounded and filled with personal meaning—they are rituals.

I’ve learned that I can use this awareness to structure my routines into ways that help keep me focused on my tasks and objectives. So, for example, making my “to do” lists helps me stay focused, yes, but it’s also a routine that forces me to be conscious of what I’m doing, and that, in turn, helps me be more conscious of executing the schedules and routines for a day.

For me, managing routines is the magic formula for keeping my mind focused on my daily life, despite my mind’s tendency to wander, to switch rapidly between and among different things, or to simply forget what I’m doing. It doesn’t fix the problem completely—my mind still wanders or loses focus—but it’s been by far the most effective tool I’ve found so far.

I no longer care about turning routines into habits—actually, it’s stronger than that: I actively try to avoid that because habits being done mostly/exclusively on auto-pilot means I’m actually least focused than at any other time. Rituals are, for me, a way to keep myself grounded and connected to the story arc of my entire life.

Habits, then, are the behavioural equivalent of breathing—the stuff that just happens. Routines are about everything I do in each day (even things I’ve never done before are based on what I’ve already done), and rituals keep me connected to myself.

There are some quite specific reasons why I chose to structure my personal organisational system the way I have, but awareness of how powerful routine can be in creating the structure on which we build our lives is at the very centre of the whole thing. My personal building work in creating a new life for myself is far from complete, but it at least seems possible now, and that alone makes all the work I’ve been doing worth it.