Inertia is the enemy of change

I'm big on routines. To some, it may even look like a boring life.

I like to know what my weeks are made of, and usually, it's the same pattern week after week.

Take Mondays, for instance. Every Monday has the same structure as the previous one and the next. It's the same type of work in the morning, the same type of work in the afternoon. A lunch break around 12:30 to have the same chicken salad as usual.

Routines enable us to place parts of our lives on autopilot to maximize time and save some cognitive energy to pursue what truly matters to us.

That's the theory.

But if you keep a routine unchallenged for a long enough time, its inertia makes it difficult to reconsider. You think: "Everything got fine-tuned over time, and removing or changing a piece now may cause the whole system to break down."

So, you continue doing things out of habit. Not because they allow you to optimize for more joy or efficiency in your life anymore.

As is often the case with these topics, knowing about the problem is how we can address it. If we acknowledge how potent the inertia of a routine is, we can keep it in mind while deliberately reviewing how we organize our lives.

Reassessing and adapting routines is not dangerous; it's the sane thing to do.