When Is Your Routine TOO Routine?

It’s not uncommon for habit and routine to dictate our pattern of life. We become creatures of habit and develop routine for many reasons. Routine makes us feel focused, organized, and stable. It creates efficiency. At work, habits and routine can help us to be productive. In retirement, they help us approach our day with some sort of strategy. But when does our desire to stick to the predictable get in our way? When does it limit our ability to be creative or even just flexible? 

Does your routine have a value or reason?  Or are you just doing it because you’ve always done it?  When we were raising our children and both working full time, routine was key. We did laundry and grocery shopped on specific days, dinner was on the table at a specific time, and nobody messed with homework and bed times. There was a good reason for that routine. It worked really well for us. But there comes a point when our desire to stick to our routine gets in our way. As life changes, our routine should change along with it. So what if our laundry doesn’t get done on Wednesday so that we can take care of a sick grandchild or we grocery shop on a different day because a friend needs a ride to the doctor?  Especially in retirement, we have the luxury of being flexible. If we don’t see the value in the routine - we can’t come up with a good reason why we’re doing what we’re doing - we are doing it out of habit, not necessity. 

Do you panic or stress out when you are asked to do something out of your routine?  Pre-retirement, I loved my morning routine. Probably because of the chaos of the work day, I needed routine and predictability from the time my feet hit the floor getting out of bed to the minute I started my day at work. It’s no wonder I now start my post-retirement days with the same consistency. But if we have difficulty handling unplanned situations (aka emergencies) because they don’t fit into our schedule, we are too routine.  Any good schedule should have some level of flexibility. If we start spiraling into a panic at the first sight of surprise in our schedule, our strategy is only serving to make us inflexible. 

Is your daily routine becoming monotonous? Changing up our trusty routine can give us a whole new perspective and help us generate fresh new ideas. Too much routine tends to stifle our creativity. 

Are you more concerned with routine than the end result? Focusing on the process rather than on the end result can be counterproductive.  You’ve always taken family vacations the first week of July. “It’s what we do.”  But it’s no longer a good time for some family members. Refusing to change vacation week to fit everyone’s schedule only hurts the end result of taking an annual family vacation. 

Does changing your routine affect your mood? I realized I was a little too obsessed with my routine when I wasn’t able to get my patio furniture put away by Columbus Day weekend (and I ALWAYS have it put away by Columbus Day weekend).  I was in a ridiculous emotional funk, borderline rotten mood, all week until I got it put away. This may sound unreasonable, but if we rely too much on a scheduled approach to life, any revision can send us into a tailspin. Again, if there’s no room for flexibility, our routine isn’t doing us any favors.