Routines reduce the cost of context switches

Routines form the brainless scaffold around which you plan and execute variable tasks. The human mind has an extraordinary capacity to get used to things. One aspect of this ability is how we begin to treat routines consisting of many steps as one thing. Think of the many things you do often to verify this. For example, think of all the individual steps in showering, but because you do the same thing every time, you treat it as just one thing. There is little to no cost in switching between the subtasks of showering because it is routinized. It doesn’t require your active attention.

Routinize every repetitive thing in your life. For example, consider converting at least some portion of your eating, workout, sleeping, and bathroom activities into a routine. By making every repetitive, unavoidable, overhead task as close to a routine as possible, you will preserve the most resources for what matters the most.

Routines can become a double-edged sword in the sense that the power they lend in removing things from your awareness also makes it easy to miss cues that it is time to change them up.

You can gain great efficiency from recognizing what events in your life you can reduce to habit through making them a thoughtless routine, but you still need to openly seek for how you can improve them. For example, if you’ve created a routine of your workout plans, make it better by adding the habit of listening to thought-provoking podcasts while working out.

Routines should be noticed and discontinued when they no longer serve their intended purpose. “Because we always have” is not a good reason for doing anything. The existence of something suggests there is a reason for it, and a reason for looking for that reason, but it is not itself a reason.¹ Who hasn’t attended a recurring meeting that had no purpose?

As a special note, routinization is a massive potential efficiency gain for parents. So much about a child’s life is repetitive, but parents tend to only infrequently treat it that way. Get into routines in everything that makes sense. Only leave variable the things that provide value in doing so. Look carefully at your schedule. Everything from meals to daily activities can be routinized. Even when variety needs to be preserved, loose routines can still vastly reduce the energy required to take care of daily necessities. For example, if every Monday is Mexican night, that makes it much simpler to plan and execute dinners and even to do the grocery shopping. If a stay at home mother plans recess where kids go outside to play every day from 2-3pm, that vastly simplifies a chunk of her daily life, as well as gives structure to the kids, who now can look forward to that each day. Get creative!