Here’s what I want: to move along doing the grungy stuff on automatic pilot while I think great thoughts. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? Suddenly, at the end of the day, I’d realize that every task had been done perfectly but that I hadn’t had to exert any effort to do them. All done through the magical power of habits and routines. We all know, though, that it ain’t never gonna happen. And guess what? it would be a shame if it did
If you’re like me you’re absent-minded enough as it is. I just made a couple of trips downstairs to get my camera so I could download a picture or two of the women’s tea I talked about last week, and each time I got distracted and came back upstairs without it. I certainly got to thinking about something else while I was squishing the dough into the mini-tart pans for the lemon/blueberry tartlets I made. I didn’t sit there and mindfully experience every tactile sensation as I did those. I didn’t concentrate on peeling the roasted red peppers. I wasn’t at one with the knife as I chopped up way too much chicken for the chicken salad. (What on earth was I thinking? And you can’t freeze stuff like that. We’re making a real effort to eat it up, but I have a feeling that some of it’s going to get thrown out. I can’t even compost it!) But still–I had to make the choice to do those things, and to do the shopping that made those things possible, and to pack everything up and get over to the church on time. And to push through the inertia that always befalls me right before an event, when it just seems unbelievable that it’s actually going to happen. (I think the most horrible half hour, event-wise, is the one right before Thanksgiving dinner, when you’ve been working and slaving and baking and roasting and chopping, and then you actually have to get everything on the table.)
Habits and routines are the tools that help us make two vital choices:: to get going and to keep going. For me, it’s enormously helpful to tell myself, “You’ve done this before, and it worked, so just do it again.” Or, alternatively, “You put things off last time and it was a disaster. Get going!” I talk quite a bit in my book about the importance of the actual thoughts we allow ourselves to think. I’m beginning to realize that, as much as I partake of the Obliger tendency (so that I’m more motivated by others’ expectations than my own), I’m also somewhat of a Questioner (so that if I’m convinced that something is true I will probably act on it). (See the April 1 post on Gretchen Rubin’s new book on habits that explains the Four Tendencies.) I’m fond of talking about what I call “switch-flipping moments,” when I suddenly see an issue in a new light. Just in the last week or so I had such a moment about what the New Testament actually teaches about marriage. (But that subject will have to wait.)
And why do I say that it would be a shame if we could just mindlessly do the mindless work? Because nothing that you do is really mindless. Believe me, I usually have the radio on, or the TV, or I’m reading a book propped up on my stand, if the task I’m doing at all permits me to do so. When I’m working on my cross-stitching I don’t sit and listen to the susurration of the thread as it goes through each hole in the aida cloth. There’s no reason not do something to entertain yourself as you do repetitious work; I often wonder how people got through the long evenings back before there were books and radios. Mrs. Fairfax, the housekeeper at Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre (a vastly overrated novel in my opinion), tells Jane that “I’m sure last winter (it was a very severe one, if you recollect, and when it did not snow, it rained and blew), not a creature but the butcher and postman came to the house, from November till February; and I really got quite melancholy with sitting night after night alone.” All she has to occupy herself is her knitting.
So I want to use the tools of habit and routine to structure my time but not to deaden it. I want to want to get my work done. And I need to realize that sometimes an entertaining distraction is more trouble than it’s worth. I’m sure I could have gotten my papers graded much faster when I was a teacher if I’d just sat down and done them rather than tending to think that I should do them in front of the TV. Sometimes pairing two activities works (so I read a book while I’m on the exercise bike), but sometimes we’re just taking twice as long to get the work done in our zeal to multi-task (which is apparently not possible anyway). How to make those distinctions? That’s my ongoing project.