Boring, boring routine. Surely Professor Einstein got this one wrong?

Spontaneity. Creativity. Unpredictability. Excitement. These are not words usually associated with everyday routine. Think about it. You have one thousand pieces of plastic, all identical. You have to inspect them visually, one by one. Just the thought is making me dizzy already. It’s much easier and more efficient to have a machine scan them for defects. Then you can spend your time doing stuff that’s much more interesting. The same could be true for a nine-to-five routine. If you’re not in love with your job, this is very frustrating simply because it is for all intents and purposes unavoidable. The apparent inability to break free of this daily routine is particularly emasculating (for those concerned with gender equality, feel free to insert the feminine equivalent of that word). How about going to church every Sunday? Those routines you observe religiously, such as praying or reading your bible daily, meditating and the like? Same old, same old. Mind-numbing madness. Brain-to-mush transformation. These are the images often associated with the word “routine”. Not surprising if you hate it.

But hold on a minute. How about other kinds of routine? Such as Christine Ohuruogu or Sir Chris Hoy (or any other accomplished athlete for that matter) training maybe four or six hours everyday throughout their professional career? Surely that too is madness? Ok, you know what, forget that example. It’s too obvious. Let’s try another one. How about the routines of, say, brushing your teeth every morning, taking your insulin regularly, sleeping every night, maintenance checks on an airplane? What? This one’s obvious too? Ok. Maybe that was farcical, but I think you do get the point. Classifying everything that is done routinely as simply mind-numbing or boring is just silly. It’s not that simple. There is an important difference between my first few examples of routine in the previous paragraph and these other ones here. While the first ones often have no clear immediate or even quantifiable benefit, the second ones do. In fact, the routines in this second set are distinguished from the first one by the tangible nature of the issues they address. They either maintain the status quo (which is desirable) or achieve a clear goal.

What has professor Einstein got to do with all this? Well, the following quote “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result” is attributed to him. I use the word “attributed” because I’m not sure that he actually said or wrote this. Forgive me if you didn’t, Einstein. But supposing you did – supposing Einstein did say this, surely that sentence needs to be properly qualified to be true? I’ll explain what I mean. Suppose you had to break down a door. You try the first five or six times (I guess that is enough to be “over and over again”), and you keep trying. Maybe the tenth or twelfth time, the door breaks open. You are certainly insane by this time, according to that quote. You kept going at it over and over again, expecting a different result each time. Of course, in real life this wouldn’t seem so stupid at all. Anyone standing by would urge you to keep trying because it would be (hopefully – I’m not referring to the door of a bank vault here!) clear that you would eventually succeed. We are assuming that this rather slow option is the only one available to you at the time.

You see what I’m getting at? By the time you tried to break down that door ten or twelve times, you had settled into a mini routine. It was repetitive and maybe boring, but it certainly wasn’t pointless (don’t get me wrong, you are well within your right to label some routines as pointless). Anyone that thinks you were insane by doing that same thing over and over again while expecting a different result needs their head examined. If we extend this example to something else that could take a lifetime to accomplish, we will see that the same thing applies. When a besotted fellow persistently pursues the object of his devotion, even though she has repeatedly said “no”, he sometimes succeeds (this has to be interpreted carefully, because such a pursuit is not far from actual insanity!). On the flip side, by consistently and routinely being kind to strangers (some of whom might swindle you in the process), you could eventually save the life of a millionaire who will then give you a cheque (imagination at work!). I think my point has now been made.

I recently had a conversation that forced me to think more deeply about routine. I found it truly amazing that this person was able to communicate with her friend every day for the past one year (you got that right – all three hundred and sixty five and one-quarter days!). Now that has to be a routine. But this particular routine brings something else. I believe that communication is an essential social tool which, used properly, can help to establish desirable social interactions. I’ll put it another way. Saying “I love you” to my spouse everyday is a routine that can eventually lose its meaning but, if done properly, fosters security in our relationship and lays the foundation for other expressions of our creativity and spontaneity. The same is true with buying presents for the kids every Christmas or praying with the family every morning. I had to look back several years to find my own routine in which I have found security. At the time I found it incredibly boring, but was forced to keep going at it over and over again. My dad expected a different result each time I had to go through this routine, and for two decades this didn’t happen. Well, it has certainly had a different result now, although maybe not exactly in the way he envisioned it. Two decades is a long time to do the same thing while expecting different results. But it wasn’t insanity. I guarantee you that.

So maybe we should look at routine in a different light. I may not much like the routine of having to go to work everyday, but it teaches me to be consistent. That way I can hold on to the things that matter the most to me. I value the routine of saying “hi” to my friends every so often. It gives me a chance to reach outside of myself, to grow by interacting with others. I cherish the opportunity to say “I love you” to my family. I was there when my grandmother passed on, so I know it’s not an opportunity I will have forever. Sometimes the expected outcome of a perfectly good routine may not materialise until after a while. That doesn’t make the routine any less good, boring or difficult. But it does make you wise to keep going at it until you see a different result.

©2009 by Genial.