Ten years and some weeks ago, I came across the one piece of new year’s advice that I’ve ever really taken seriously in an article link a friend posted on Facebook: focus on the system and not the goal. In the years since, I’ve come across this same idea in different forms. Don’t Break the Chain. No More Zero Days. CGP Grey’s Theme System. In other words: Routines, not resolutions. Guidance, not goals.
When I found the original article my friend had posted by using the Wayback Machine, I quickly realized that it wasn’t the most earth-shattering piece of writing. It’s your standard listicle with a clickbait-y headline. It’s the kind of source that if one my students tried to include it in their research paper, I’d encourage them to keep digging deeper to examine each of the items in the list to find the underlying research. Whatever merits this particular article held for me were probably more a matter of the person who shared it on Facebook; a friend had posted it, and I trust my friends, right? Plus, I was about to embark on my last semester of undergrad at the time, and was therefore open to any and all advice for self-improvement when three and a half years of college felt like it didn’t quite do it for me.
A lot has changed in the past decade, but one thing that has remained constant is my love of seeing a counter of consecutive successful days go up, to see a row of checkboxes checked, to see a calendar get filled in with days I’ve kept up my habits. Of course, during this same time, my ability to stick to routines has, itself, not quite become routine. Every season there’s something new: a different class I need to learn how to teach, or a new milestone I need to reach in my degree. Then there’s the pandemic. And extreme weather events. And all kinds of big and small disasters that I tell myself are always temporary, but nonetheless have lingering effects. Even when things are “over” and I can return to “normal,” it takes a long time for me to revert to form.
But maybe the one thing I’ve really learned is how to try again. Maybe the one thing that has changed is that I’m much more willing to change what my “normal form” is—more interested in adapting than trying to stay a certain course.
Since it’s winter break, many of the campus facilities have been closed between Christmas and New Year’s, but today the campus gym opened bright and early. While I wasn’t there right at opening, I was there before dawn (not a difficult feat since sunrise is after 7:30am right now, and that’s not the earliest I’ve ever woken up for something). It was my first time visiting the campus gym; though I’ve said to myself multiple times that this season I’ll finally get back into a regular gym habit, there’s always been something in the way: a COVID resurgence (or a new variant), or dangerously low temperatures, or unhealthy air quality. I’m fully aware that any of these things could come back to stymie me once again. Even today’s journey to the gym had the potential to be doomed; the campus recreation center is undergoing some renovations to the locker rooms, and in the past that would have been enough to waylay me again.
Today, though, I was determined. There are practically no students on campus; right now is the perfect time to establish a routine before the gym gets crowded again when people return for the semester. I can figure out where all the equipment is, figure out where the lockers are, figure out what my go-to workout is going to be so that I don’t have to dawdle too much. And today, to ease myself back into exercising, I did a simple workout on an elliptical and a cool-down on a rowing machine. I’m already looking forward to doing something different tomorrow now that I’ve gone and done it once.
Next week I’ll probably find some reason not to go to the gym. Or maybe partway through the semester, when I travel for AWP and then to a comparative literature conference, my routines will be so severely interrupted that I’ll have to start over. But until then, I’ll keep trying. One day at a time.
Here are some other routines I’m trying to pick up this year:
- Blogging biweekly. I sort of got into this habit during the latter half of last year, though I missed a few weeks after Thanksgiving. But I have plans this year for blog posts. I hope to make good on them. (Which means that you, dear reader, have biweekly posts to look forward to.)
- Writing three pages daily. While these can be just free writing, I’d ideally like to write towards a publishable piece of some kind.
- Use my paper planner daily. I love paper planners, but around October of last year I suddenly stopped using mine because I just got so overwhelmed; I felt like I didn’t even have enough time to sit down and write out my schedule once a week. My system wasn’t working, so I’m trying a new system this year with a Hobonichi daily planner. One of my older brothers got me a Hobonichi for Christmas one year, and I’ve wanted to give the daily planner another try.
- Share what I’m reading in some way. This is a fuzzy idea, and I’m not even sure what form this will take (Goodreads? StoryGraph? Bluesky posts? Snail mail to friends?), but I think my prior aspirations to read more have not necessarily yielded results, so I’m changing angles. It’s not just that I’ll read more, I’m going to share more.
What about you? What are some of your routines, aspirational or otherwise?
Caroliena Cabada 