By Tony Samson
ROUTINE is defined as “a usual fixed way of doing things,” which is often how life is lived. T.S. Eliot describes routine too — “I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.” The felt absence of routine may rank next only to the loss of regular income for a retiring executive. So used is he to checking his schedule of the day that a completely blank calendar is sure to throw him off.
The calendar on the phone has a monthly setting that marks how busy one feels. Each date in the 30-day window is tagged to show that there is at least one activity or reminder for that day (check out karaoke bar).
A day is divided into hourly slats where meetings, conference calls, presentations, seminars, trips, plant visits, trysts, acupuncture, root canal, and meals are distributed. Travel time is not recorded, even if takes up chunks of time. Does a blank page constitute a life without purpose? Does routine drive life, or is it the other way around? (Turn off alarm; Check pillow for saliva stains.)
Routine is comforting to linear corporate types, used as they are to calendaring appointments and being told what to do and achieving time-bound targets. This is not so for entrepreneurs and plumbers who are on the receiving end of disruptions. But that’s another story.
What can be more distressing to the creature of habit than not having an agenda except to wait for what the day will bring? Should she get a small dog?
The need of once very busy executives for routine makes them easy recruits for holding companies and start-ups, at bargain rates, or even NGOs for free. While the comfortable flurry of entries to feed the calendar satisfies the need for routine, it does not address the other regular item that is lost, the revenue stream.
The retiree’s lament becomes, yes, routine — I’m busier than ever but making less money than before. He is quick to add before the still employed colleague starts to get nervous (is he going to hit me for a loan?) — But I’ve never been happier, free of all that stress. Really?
The pining for routine goes beyond “keeping busy.” Routine offers comfort and a vague sense of being constantly needed. How does the routine day so openly despised when coming with such predictable frequency magically turn into a nostalgic desire? Didn’t the job fall into a rut (the same root word of routine, after all)?
True, waking up, dressing, driving to work and the camaraderie of office mates who can discuss the same cast of characters without having to ask what the initials stand for provide predictability and small talk. (So, is he getting more forgetful now?)
Losing routine days should not lead to being unmoored, as if the pegs of our lives have been pulled out to cast us adrift, our sheltering tent blown away by the wind. Rather than hastily replacing office routine with another sort of busy-ness, why not experiment with a non-routine day?
`This simulated experience of unpredictability can occur in the middle of a work week. (Golf every Wednesday does not count.) A long two-hour lunch left blank can be a good start. Maybe it can be spent with a visit to the museum or a body scrub or just lunch alone in a previously untried place. It’s enough to leave the activity blank up to the last minute. At 11:45 a.m., you can decide what to do with the vacant lot in your subdivision of time.
Unscheduled activities are sometimes referred to as “derailers,” something that can throw the train off its rails, and out of its rut. Such derailers often refer to crisis events that are life threatening. Anyway, there’s no need to get into practice. Life’s disruptions are becoming too numerous and have become now just a routine matter.
Tony Samson is chairman and CEO, TOUCH xda
ar.samson@yahoo.com
