How Routines and Checklists Can Power Your Life

(Quotes throughout are taken from this amazing article by Maria Popova.)

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” I read this and started to think about balance. What’s the right balance between productivity/routine and presence/spontaneity?

In defense of routines: “London maintained that every writer needed a technique, experience, and a philosophical position.” Lots of writers had/have routines. They are generally a very obsessive and superstitious bunch. (“I never think about the actual process of writing. I suppose I have  superstition bout examining it too closely.” - Anne Tyler) I’m not necessarily a writer, but I am a college student, and the same things can be said of me as of many writers. The seclusion. The writer’s block. The seeming futility of the work. The routines in my life help me to overlook and overcome the dread of starting another day that is mostly like the last one and mostly filled with things I don’t feel like doing. Getting to check off a bunch of boxes as the day progresses is simply how I reward myself in the short term. Degrees are notoriously far-off rewards for students’ present-day suffering.

But there are people who insist that routines kill the joy of life: “Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.” But is that really what happens when you live in routine? Yes, if you live in them completely, leaving yourself no time to enjoy life, be flexible, be human. But a balance of both is certainly key to being a productive, forward-moving individual.

Routines and checklists make life easier to bare, more streamlined, they make us more efficient. There are so many things in life that are annoying or boring or difficult but that we must do. Routines lessen the pain that we feel as we make our way from where we are at to where we want to be. That is their purpose. I’ll admit some peoples’ lives are more filled with structure than they are with spontaneity, mine included, but there are periods of life, including college, that require such structure. I’d be a slacking C-student, skipping every few classes if I didn’t hold my checklists in such high regard. My tendency to slip into laziness is real and scary, and so it is for most of us.

Doing what has to be done is a struggle. Our bodies fight against exercise. Our brains shy away from difficult problems. And we’d (I’d) always rather watch Netflix than write a blog post. But if “write blog post” is sitting there on my to-do list, I’d rather do that before letting myself relax. In fact, I couldn’t relax until the box was checked. This is where balance comes in. Without the goals I set for myself, I don’t feel worthy of the reward of nothing to do. Too much of one or the other wouldn’t be healthy, especially for me, who is very sensitive to feeling unproductive/overwhelmed.

The key then is twofold. First, figure out how much structure and how much freedom your current situation calls for. (College students need much more than, say, someone who has a stable 9-to-5 job in their field of choice.) Second, figure out which parts of your life should be inserted into a routine. Some people (including myself) need a very detailed list of daily tasks. Some get overwhelmed by long lists and need to see a short but more general list. Once you've figured out how much and what parts of your life you should routinize, it's time to prescribe it to yourself and start following it. Surrender to it. Let it do the difficult job of keeping you on track.

(For more about the productivity apps I use, see this post.)