Change isn’t always easy, especially when it comes to old habits. The longer you’re in a routine, the harder it will be to get rid of it or learn a new one. This is true for private as well as for professional life.
Being in one or more routines isn’t necessarily bad. You get up in the morning, get a shower, have breakfast and go to work. Nothing special here. And despite the fact that it’s just plain normal I find myself standing in the kitchen thinking about this routine and how it bugs me. I’m honest here, I hate routines. Doing the same every day for a longer time is just boring for me. I hate taking the same train to work, I hate always taking the same route to work.
But I adopted some small tricks that made these routines acceptable: I regularly (not to say routinely) change them. Not big time, but only small parts of them. It’s not that I’m afraid of routines. I just like to tweak them to keep myself happy and ready for change, and maybe even get an improvement as a result. Here’s some stuff I do to keep routines interesting:
* Take a different route to work. This is especially true when I’m commuting by bike. Berlin is a big city, and the longer the way to work the more chances I have to go different routes and see different parts of Berlin. I don’t mind cycling one or to kilometres more or less, that’s not the point. I can have an eye on what’s happening in the city, and I don’t get bored seeing the same cars and cyclists every day.
* Have something else for breakfast. I tend to eat granola with lots of fruit and yoghurt for breakfast. But after some weeks it’s time for a small break and I switch to buns for a few days. Spare me with health advice, I only eat them for a few days, since I then realise I like granola more.
* Try to get rid of a nagging or annoying habit. Knuckle-cracking is a good example, since it’s not only bad for your finger, it tends to annoy people around me. I used to do it too, now it annoys me when other people do it. I’m tempted to write smoking as an example, but that’s up to you. Important thing is to get rid of old habits. If there’s something you liked about the old habit (which is not gonna happen for smoking I reckon), try to involve the good stuff into a new habit. Nicotine chewing gum anyone?
If you can’t think of one thing right now, ask others if something about you bothers them or if they see room for improvement in something you do. Think about it and find out how to do it better. But keep the change SMART. Finding room to change also has the advantage that you can accept necessary routines. Keeping one thing interesting makes it easier to let another thing not bore you.
You get the idea. Accepting change is hard in the big picture, but changing small details and seeing how it works out can help to be more open to change in general. Looking back over the last years, it worked pretty well for me. Which is not to say I don’t have annoying habits anymore. Then there wouldn’t be much to change, would it? It just keeps me interested in trying out news things and adapting them, if they help me to do something faster, better or with more fun. And no, I don’t smoke anymore.