Honestly I think the problem here is the lack of a liberal amount of time off. I haven’t traveled on an extended vacation for years. I had several lay offs and never accrued a significant amount...
Honestly I think the problem here is the lack of a liberal amount of time off.
I haven’t traveled on an extended vacation for years. I had several lay offs and never accrued a significant amount of time off. On top of that, I never accumulated enough money to pay for any meaningful trip beyond a weekend stay.
My routine is fine. But I have nothing but my routine and that makes me overall miserable.
Yeah I feel like businesses don’t understand or don’t care that even just giving people a free day per month to take off work would make people much happier.
Yeah I feel like businesses don’t understand or don’t care that even just giving people a free day per month to take off work would make people much happier.
I think mandatory minimums for paid time off need to be enforced at the federal level and we need to make sure that it’s at least a month per year. Sick policies also can’t be lumped into the same...
I think mandatory minimums for paid time off need to be enforced at the federal level and we need to make sure that it’s at least a month per year. Sick policies also can’t be lumped into the same pool as vacation.
Paid vacation time and sick time are not mandatory offerings in much of the USA. My one friend gets 10 vacation days a year and 5 sick days a year. He's 40 working in a senior-position...
Paid vacation time and sick time are not mandatory offerings in much of the USA.
My one friend gets 10 vacation days a year and 5 sick days a year. He's 40 working in a senior-position white-collar job.
Totally agree, and I'm sorry to hear you're in that situation as well. I don't think I've ever managed more than one week off at a time, excepting the year I took between jobs for recovery from...
Totally agree, and I'm sorry to hear you're in that situation as well. I don't think I've ever managed more than one week off at a time, excepting the year I took between jobs for recovery from utter physical and mental health collapse. I hope you never reach that point, and can get some relief before it's forced on you.
I'm currently booked with work to the point that I'll have to force the issue to get contiguous days off. My direct line managers are well aware that I've already lost unbankable vacation time last year, and they want me to take comp days here and there as possible. But there's literally no way to meet our go-live targets if I take a full week, when I'm now doing three people's jobs due to layoffs. The workload is manageable, but draining, and I need respite.
I'm also buckled in tightly with this job, due to household healthcare needs that would be unsustainable without the very good employer-provided insurance plan. Then there's the nasty age-discrimination trap - too young to retire, too old and chipped-up to be a desirable new employee elsewhere.
So I acknowledge the article has a very privileged perspective; it presumes that people have the luxury of free time and money to pursue necessary psychological enrichment.
Ding ding ding. It's real dehumanizing not feeling safe leaving an employer because you know you'll go bankrupt if there's a lapse in your insurance coverage.
I'm also buckled in tightly with this job, due to household healthcare needs that would be unsustainable without the very good employer-provided insurance plan.
Ding ding ding. It's real dehumanizing not feeling safe leaving an employer because you know you'll go bankrupt if there's a lapse in your insurance coverage.
For me this comes down to a question of intent. The difference between a rut and a routine is one of deliberate intent for a perceived gain. Ignoring things like chores and other necessities, a...
Exemplary
For me this comes down to a question of intent. The difference between a rut and a routine is one of deliberate intent for a perceived gain. Ignoring things like chores and other necessities, a routine should be something you do regularly for the purpose of growth or fulfillment. A rut is something you just do, living your life on auto pilot.
The problem is that routines become ruts over time if your don't periodically examine them by asking yourself if your are getting the benefit you expected, and if it is still the best use of that time. We often construct routines, become comfortable, and stop feeling fulfilled. In the context of career growth I've often told people that being comfortable is one of the worst things you can be. In terms of your personal life, some comfort is good, and recuperative. Too much and you stagnate, become listless, and wonder why you don't feel fulfilled despite having a well put together life.
I think it is related to the balancing we do between our experiencing and our remembering selves, and balancing being happy vs fulfilled.
My recommendation would be to structure time for unstructured activities or new things. Assuming you have the time and/or money, challenging yourself to do new things on a cadence, including things you would normally shy away from. That, along with routinely scrutinizing your individual routines. Asking yourself what you really Want in life, with a capital W, and structuring your time to achieve that.
It takes effort to stay engaged and not let the years of your life blur together, but you will be happier for it.
It might not be what Socrates meant, but "The unexamined life is not worth living” applies here.
Edit: for a book that takes a look at living with intent in a narrow context, I suggest "Being mortal" by Atul Gawande. A very emotional book, but in it he talks about how as we age we need to examine our lives and prioritize that which brings us the most joy within our capabilities. Take that book, and then extrapolate to all ages of your life, apply the same exercises to time and money as the book applies to health, and you will have a good template for living with intent.
From the article (archive): By all means, read the whole thing. I suspect this topic will be very resonant for most Tildes members, given the preponderance of remote knowledge workers here. It's...
I’ve been working from home, on a computer, for 12 years now, and the autonomy my job affords has allowed me to sand all the rough edges from my routines. By most measures, I’m a model of health, efficiency and productivity. I spend every morning in undistracted, email-free “deep work”, and I long ago purged social media from my life. I maintain a steady sleep-wake schedule, exercise daily and home-cook most of my meals using whole foods. I’m married with children. I have friends, and I spend time with them. I travel and read books. None of this has allowed me, at 41, to avoid the gradual onset of mid-life melancholy, which I’ve come to believe is a consequence of my overly routinised way of life. I don’t think I have the wrong habits; I think I have too many of them. And they are suffocating me.
By all means, read the whole thing. I suspect this topic will be very resonant for most Tildes members, given the preponderance of remote knowledge workers here. It's certainly salient for me and my spouse. He's just resuming a self-directed life after 14 years of doing almost exactly what the author describes, while I'm being forced deeper into a managed habitual existence that feels imprisoning.
Even though I often travel for work with teammates, that's still routinized and offers little opportunity for exploration or meaningful connection. After four years in a new community, the pandemic, our rural location, interests, and age cohort are still hampering our ability to create deep social ties. I've been aching for a break, and will probably run off soon on a solo trip to try and grind away the deep-etched groove of screen-facing monotony.
This article also reminded me of /u/Wolf_359's assertion that much of our lives are predetermined. I prefer to think that genetic legacy is only a very partial explanation, and that early learned habits are the seeds of our individual life decision trees.
So here are my questions:
What do you do when you feel like you can't tolerate another minute of your routines?
Are you generally satisfied with the balance of your positive/negative habits? If so, what's been most useful, what most deleterious, and what habits are both, depending on circumstances?
What resources or changes of routine do you think it would take to liberate and restore you, even briefly?
Does your social network feed your needs for connection and novelty, and if so, how?
How do you think society and the world at large should be reorganized to mitigate isolation and ennui?
Personal question - what places in the U.S. do you think might offer a week of the most novel solo experiences for the dollar? [Caveats: age 50's with some physical limitations - no extreme cold or sun exposure, steep/uneven terrain and biking aren't feasible, but long walks/hikes are fine. Good public transit preferred. Museums, art walks, gardens, and historical sites are welcome. Leaning towards D.C. or Philadelphia.]
With a family with small children, the day to day life is very much a well defined routine that one just have to be somewhat comfortable in. But it also means I like going to the office 4 out of 5...
With a family with small children, the day to day life is very much a well defined routine that one just have to be somewhat comfortable in. But it also means I like going to the office 4 out of 5 workdays. Even though I am the typical introverted software developer, I still need to be around other people than my household. It adds some very needed social diversity to the daily routine. Working from home during the pandemic was fine, but I also realized that I couldn't live like that forever. By some metrics it was probably more productive, but also too much routine day in and out.
I don't have kids, and I've often wondered if part of the rumored joy of having them is that they provide a source of (both good and terrifying) novel experience in days that would otherwise be...
I don't have kids, and I've often wondered if part of the rumored joy of having them is that they provide a source of (both good and terrifying) novel experience in days that would otherwise be brutally similar? Do you feel like you have meaningful social connections through other parents and caregivers, extended family, schools, etc.?
Having kids I would say that there isn't anything inherently in having them that helps you avoid the rut vs routine trap. If anything, the work kids bring make routines necessary just to keep up...
Having kids I would say that there isn't anything inherently in having them that helps you avoid the rut vs routine trap. If anything, the work kids bring make routines necessary just to keep up and stay sane. However, if you can continue to inject spontaneity into your life, then they can help build upon that.
If you ask kids what they want to do, many will give you the same answers from a fairly short list almost all of the time. So you need to drag them into a new situation. However, once there, they do a lot to keep things dynamic, fun, and interesting. And seeing them light up on new experiences can give you the encouragement to do it again, because doing anything with kids is hard.
And when they get to tween/teen years they will act outwardly annoyed when you do anything spontaneous. You just need to soldier through to the payoff.
I know plenty of people with kids who are just on autopilot, going through life like a checklist.
And having kids also can make ruts worse. I agree with the whole of your post though. I want to leave my job. I'm in a rut there. But I can't afford the pay cut (and healthcare loss) that would be...
And having kids also can make ruts worse. I agree with the whole of your post though.
I want to leave my job. I'm in a rut there. But I can't afford the pay cut (and healthcare loss) that would be required to get out of said rut. It'd be easier if I was willing to force the kids to abandon their friends.
In a way I guess though it is probably more about the developmental life phases. Having a baby gets very samey in day to day, but then everything changes when they start daycare. Later school and...
In a way I guess though it is probably more about the developmental life phases. Having a baby gets very samey in day to day, but then everything changes when they start daycare. Later school and so on with plenty of thing in between.
I have certainly come to appreciate the small social interactions one can have with familiar people during the week. Like the friendly small talk with that barista that starts making your usual just by seeing you. Not that is any replacement for deeper social interactions but just talking to a sensible adult has great value.
Oh, I love this premise so much! I'm in a similar boat as the author - work from home job at a screen all day, lots of flexibility with my time. So I'll offer my own anecdote here as well: I went...
Oh, I love this premise so much! I'm in a similar boat as the author - work from home job at a screen all day, lots of flexibility with my time. So I'll offer my own anecdote here as well:
I went through a year or so phase of consistent good habits. Walking 7-10k steps a day + calisthenics, doing chores, going to bed by 10pm, using my phone less, reading more books, journaling, chipping away at side/house projects/hobbies, all that good stuff. I was using Habitica (online gamified RPG) to track and give myself points for everything.
And I was not any significantly happier then than I am now, having done jack all today, eating garbage, using my phone way too much, some days having no idea what I even did or where the hell the time went. More productive, sure. Smugger, 100%. But happier, more content, or even just less anxious? Ehh. The biggest difference there that I've made in my entire life has been finally seeing a psychiatrist and getting on antidepressants.
To return to the article, I loved the conclusion about the "need for balance between the novel and the familiar" being so important. It's something I've always thought about casually, how wired our brains seem to be for novelty or even nostalgia over what's "normal". Not sure I have anything super insightful to say about it, but I appreciate hearing from someone else who had the shine of atomic habits eventually wear off on them.
I think the routinization of life through habit can become a self-destructive system for mitigating anxiety. There's magical thinking in creating totemic rituals for success, even though breaking...
I think the routinization of life through habit can become a self-destructive system for mitigating anxiety. There's magical thinking in creating totemic rituals for success, even though breaking the pattern in any way just cranks up your fear of failure on any axis of self-improvement. I know I'm personally vulnerable to that problem, having an obsessive enough need for control and perfected habits to suffer years of anorexia as a teen and young adult.
It's amazing how different it is, depending on where we start. I tend toward being disorganized. It was life changing to me to realize that anyone who want to accomplish a project such as writing...
It's amazing how different it is, depending on where we start. I tend toward being disorganized. It was life changing to me to realize that anyone who want to accomplish a project such as writing a novel or running a marathon while also employed and maintaining relationships needs certain routines.
But routines aren't sufficient for happiness and they aren't about happiness.. They are agnostic to happiness.
Thank you - I was trying to get at the idea of orthogonality. There's an intersection between habit and happiness, but the relationship between the two isn't direct.
Thank you - I was trying to get at the idea of orthogonality. There's an intersection between habit and happiness, but the relationship between the two isn't direct.
Haha! Yeah, fear of failure is a great way of putting it. I also feel self-improvement can be too commercialized or idealized to the point of unhelpfulness - Zach Weinersmith made a very pithy...
Haha! Yeah, fear of failure is a great way of putting it. I also feel self-improvement can be too commercialized or idealized to the point of unhelpfulness - Zach Weinersmith made a very pithy comic on it that I chortled at but realized was becoming too true of me at the time.
Honestly I think the problem here is the lack of a liberal amount of time off.
I haven’t traveled on an extended vacation for years. I had several lay offs and never accrued a significant amount of time off. On top of that, I never accumulated enough money to pay for any meaningful trip beyond a weekend stay.
My routine is fine. But I have nothing but my routine and that makes me overall miserable.
Yeah I feel like businesses don’t understand or don’t care that even just giving people a free day per month to take off work would make people much happier.
I think mandatory minimums for paid time off need to be enforced at the federal level and we need to make sure that it’s at least a month per year. Sick policies also can’t be lumped into the same pool as vacation.
Isn't this how vacation days work?
Paid vacation time and sick time are not mandatory offerings in much of the USA.
My one friend gets 10 vacation days a year and 5 sick days a year. He's 40 working in a senior-position white-collar job.
Totally agree, and I'm sorry to hear you're in that situation as well. I don't think I've ever managed more than one week off at a time, excepting the year I took between jobs for recovery from utter physical and mental health collapse. I hope you never reach that point, and can get some relief before it's forced on you.
I'm currently booked with work to the point that I'll have to force the issue to get contiguous days off. My direct line managers are well aware that I've already lost unbankable vacation time last year, and they want me to take comp days here and there as possible. But there's literally no way to meet our go-live targets if I take a full week, when I'm now doing three people's jobs due to layoffs. The workload is manageable, but draining, and I need respite.
I'm also buckled in tightly with this job, due to household healthcare needs that would be unsustainable without the very good employer-provided insurance plan. Then there's the nasty age-discrimination trap - too young to retire, too old and chipped-up to be a desirable new employee elsewhere.
So I acknowledge the article has a very privileged perspective; it presumes that people have the luxury of free time and money to pursue necessary psychological enrichment.
Ding ding ding. It's real dehumanizing not feeling safe leaving an employer because you know you'll go bankrupt if there's a lapse in your insurance coverage.
For me this comes down to a question of intent. The difference between a rut and a routine is one of deliberate intent for a perceived gain. Ignoring things like chores and other necessities, a routine should be something you do regularly for the purpose of growth or fulfillment. A rut is something you just do, living your life on auto pilot.
The problem is that routines become ruts over time if your don't periodically examine them by asking yourself if your are getting the benefit you expected, and if it is still the best use of that time. We often construct routines, become comfortable, and stop feeling fulfilled. In the context of career growth I've often told people that being comfortable is one of the worst things you can be. In terms of your personal life, some comfort is good, and recuperative. Too much and you stagnate, become listless, and wonder why you don't feel fulfilled despite having a well put together life.
I think it is related to the balancing we do between our experiencing and our remembering selves, and balancing being happy vs fulfilled.
My recommendation would be to structure time for unstructured activities or new things. Assuming you have the time and/or money, challenging yourself to do new things on a cadence, including things you would normally shy away from. That, along with routinely scrutinizing your individual routines. Asking yourself what you really Want in life, with a capital W, and structuring your time to achieve that.
It takes effort to stay engaged and not let the years of your life blur together, but you will be happier for it.
It might not be what Socrates meant, but "The unexamined life is not worth living” applies here.
Edit: for a book that takes a look at living with intent in a narrow context, I suggest "Being mortal" by Atul Gawande. A very emotional book, but in it he talks about how as we age we need to examine our lives and prioritize that which brings us the most joy within our capabilities. Take that book, and then extrapolate to all ages of your life, apply the same exercises to time and money as the book applies to health, and you will have a good template for living with intent.
Great post.
From the article (archive):
By all means, read the whole thing. I suspect this topic will be very resonant for most Tildes members, given the preponderance of remote knowledge workers here. It's certainly salient for me and my spouse. He's just resuming a self-directed life after 14 years of doing almost exactly what the author describes, while I'm being forced deeper into a managed habitual existence that feels imprisoning.
Even though I often travel for work with teammates, that's still routinized and offers little opportunity for exploration or meaningful connection. After four years in a new community, the pandemic, our rural location, interests, and age cohort are still hampering our ability to create deep social ties. I've been aching for a break, and will probably run off soon on a solo trip to try and grind away the deep-etched groove of screen-facing monotony.
This article also reminded me of /u/Wolf_359's assertion that much of our lives are predetermined. I prefer to think that genetic legacy is only a very partial explanation, and that early learned habits are the seeds of our individual life decision trees.
So here are my questions:
What do you do when you feel like you can't tolerate another minute of your routines?
Are you generally satisfied with the balance of your positive/negative habits? If so, what's been most useful, what most deleterious, and what habits are both, depending on circumstances?
What resources or changes of routine do you think it would take to liberate and restore you, even briefly?
Does your social network feed your needs for connection and novelty, and if so, how?
How do you think society and the world at large should be reorganized to mitigate isolation and ennui?
Personal question - what places in the U.S. do you think might offer a week of the most novel solo experiences for the dollar? [Caveats: age 50's with some physical limitations - no extreme cold or sun exposure, steep/uneven terrain and biking aren't feasible, but long walks/hikes are fine. Good public transit preferred. Museums, art walks, gardens, and historical sites are welcome. Leaning towards D.C. or Philadelphia.]
I’d love to contribute to the discussion but the article seems to be paywalled.
patience_limited provided an archive link in their comment.
Oh oops. I missed that link that said archive. Thanks for pointing it out!
There's an archive link in my comment - hope this helps!
Yes thanks. I missed it! Great read, thanks for sharing.
With a family with small children, the day to day life is very much a well defined routine that one just have to be somewhat comfortable in. But it also means I like going to the office 4 out of 5 workdays. Even though I am the typical introverted software developer, I still need to be around other people than my household. It adds some very needed social diversity to the daily routine. Working from home during the pandemic was fine, but I also realized that I couldn't live like that forever. By some metrics it was probably more productive, but also too much routine day in and out.
I don't have kids, and I've often wondered if part of the rumored joy of having them is that they provide a source of (both good and terrifying) novel experience in days that would otherwise be brutally similar? Do you feel like you have meaningful social connections through other parents and caregivers, extended family, schools, etc.?
Having kids I would say that there isn't anything inherently in having them that helps you avoid the rut vs routine trap. If anything, the work kids bring make routines necessary just to keep up and stay sane. However, if you can continue to inject spontaneity into your life, then they can help build upon that.
If you ask kids what they want to do, many will give you the same answers from a fairly short list almost all of the time. So you need to drag them into a new situation. However, once there, they do a lot to keep things dynamic, fun, and interesting. And seeing them light up on new experiences can give you the encouragement to do it again, because doing anything with kids is hard.
And when they get to tween/teen years they will act outwardly annoyed when you do anything spontaneous. You just need to soldier through to the payoff.
I know plenty of people with kids who are just on autopilot, going through life like a checklist.
And having kids also can make ruts worse. I agree with the whole of your post though.
I want to leave my job. I'm in a rut there. But I can't afford the pay cut (and healthcare loss) that would be required to get out of said rut. It'd be easier if I was willing to force the kids to abandon their friends.
Yeah, its tough. The decision to move or not, pros and cons for the family unit is a tough calculus to work out. Best of luck!
In a way I guess though it is probably more about the developmental life phases. Having a baby gets very samey in day to day, but then everything changes when they start daycare. Later school and so on with plenty of thing in between.
I have certainly come to appreciate the small social interactions one can have with familiar people during the week. Like the friendly small talk with that barista that starts making your usual just by seeing you. Not that is any replacement for deeper social interactions but just talking to a sensible adult has great value.
Oh, I love this premise so much! I'm in a similar boat as the author - work from home job at a screen all day, lots of flexibility with my time. So I'll offer my own anecdote here as well:
I went through a year or so phase of consistent good habits. Walking 7-10k steps a day + calisthenics, doing chores, going to bed by 10pm, using my phone less, reading more books, journaling, chipping away at side/house projects/hobbies, all that good stuff. I was using Habitica (online gamified RPG) to track and give myself points for everything.
And I was not any significantly happier then than I am now, having done jack all today, eating garbage, using my phone way too much, some days having no idea what I even did or where the hell the time went. More productive, sure. Smugger, 100%. But happier, more content, or even just less anxious? Ehh. The biggest difference there that I've made in my entire life has been finally seeing a psychiatrist and getting on antidepressants.
To return to the article, I loved the conclusion about the "need for balance between the novel and the familiar" being so important. It's something I've always thought about casually, how wired our brains seem to be for novelty or even nostalgia over what's "normal". Not sure I have anything super insightful to say about it, but I appreciate hearing from someone else who had the shine of atomic habits eventually wear off on them.
I think the routinization of life through habit can become a self-destructive system for mitigating anxiety. There's magical thinking in creating totemic rituals for success, even though breaking the pattern in any way just cranks up your fear of failure on any axis of self-improvement. I know I'm personally vulnerable to that problem, having an obsessive enough need for control and perfected habits to suffer years of anorexia as a teen and young adult.
It can be liberating to overthrow the whole system of ritual and just "wallow in my own crapulence".
It's amazing how different it is, depending on where we start. I tend toward being disorganized. It was life changing to me to realize that anyone who want to accomplish a project such as writing a novel or running a marathon while also employed and maintaining relationships needs certain routines.
But routines aren't sufficient for happiness and they aren't about happiness.. They are agnostic to happiness.
Thank you - I was trying to get at the idea of orthogonality. There's an intersection between habit and happiness, but the relationship between the two isn't direct.
Haha! Yeah, fear of failure is a great way of putting it. I also feel self-improvement can be too commercialized or idealized to the point of unhelpfulness - Zach Weinersmith made a very pithy comic on it that I chortled at but realized was becoming too true of me at the time.
"I told you bitches 3,000 years ago! Moderation is key!"
Is everyone here subscribed to the Financial Times or is it just me getting a paywall?
The OP had put the archive link on their comment but it got mixed around so isn't as easy to see.
https://archive.is/yzHjb