Daily Rituals: What Are Yours?

Daily Rituals Keep the Mundane from Making You Insane

Since the house fire, I've had to re-evaluate a lot of things: possessions, family's mental and physical status, living location, turning on and off utilities, establishing a neutral location to send and receive mail, building portable workshops and craft rooms that can be moved if needed, etc.

High on the list of evaluations is mental stability. Obviously, it is something to grapple with every day, as the head of a large household, so if I'm not feeling 100% it can be a major roadblock to our family's progress. One of the first things I recognized after the chaos of moving to Northern Arizona is that I had yet to establish a daily routine. Daily routines allow us to maximize our time, therefore, completing many tasks. Without a routine, I was wasting time looking for things I needed on a regular basis: car keys, tools, cookbooks, etc. Needless to say, it is VERY frustrating to be out of a routine. Added to that frustration was the fact that we live in a new town and don't know how to find anything. Luckily, smartphone GPS has come a long way or I would be driving around endlessly.

Now that we've begun to settle into our fourth home in five months (burned house, neighbor's house for two weeks, another neighbor's house for one week and now our newest rental), I've started to BEGIN to establish a routine. My desire for a routine was verified after a chat with my boss. I had expressed irritation at not having a "place" to put my things when I get ready for bed. He continued to tell me the routine he follows which brings him comfort on a nightly basis; where he sets his attache bag, keys, shoes kicked under the bar, and so on. He even emitted a warm smile as he described it. That is when I leapfrogged my goal of setting a routine to the top of my to-do list.

Routines are interestingly quirky. Which made me begin to wonder about the routines of other people. As I lumbered around the internet, I came across a joyful read which segued perfectly to my current quest. It is a book titled Daily Rituals: How Artists Work. It is recommended by Tim Ferriss whom I find endlessly fascinating but we'll save that for another day.  Here is a description from the Amazon page for the book:

"Currey (the author) set out to amass as much information as he could find about the routines (of ) “brilliant and successful” creators adopted and followed, and the result is a zestful survey of the working habits of “some of the greatest minds of the last four hundred years.” Currey outs the habits of nearly 200 choreographers, comedians, composers, caricaturists, filmmakers, philosophers, playwrights, painters, poets, scientists, sculptors, and writers in a dizzying array that includes Benjamin Franklin, Henri Matisse, Nikola Tesla, Stephen King, Twyla Tharp, Federico Fellini, Ann Beattie, Gustav Mahler, and Toni Morrison. Here are early birds and night owls, the phenomenally rigorous and the nearly dysfunctional."

It is a terrific read and I highly recommend it. Your purchase via my Amazon link below garners me a few pennies as well. So if you might buy it, would you mind using my link?

Buy Daily Rituals: How Artists Work on Amazon

It has certainly given me great ideas on constructing my own daily routine. It inspired me to the point of sitting down during my busy Saturday schedule to write this post even! I hope you give it a try. I should note that I bought the audible version to listen as I drive to work and do chores around the house. But I honestly had more that one occasion where I wished I had the physical book so that I could make notes and "dog-ear" a page or two.

~OJD