The Long and The Short Of It

Episode 103 - New Routines

Transcript:

Pete: Hello, listeners. Before we hop into this week's episode, Jen and I wanted to just take a quick moment to share with you something that we've been building for almost twelve months. And last week we talked about changemakers. And in that episode, actually, Jen mentioned the lab that we've been building. It's called the Big Ideas Lab. Jen, what about the Big Ideas Lab do we need to tell our lovely listeners?

Jen: Well, lovely listeners, the Big Ideas Lab is an intensive six-week workshop for people with changemaking ideas to learn the skills, the tools, and the techniques for creating and delivering high-impact content. If you are ready to get your big idea out of your head and into the world, we are so ready for you. The next session runs October 5th through November 15th. That's twice a week for six weeks. And Pete's going to tell you where to go to get all the juicy details.

Pete: You can find out anything that you would like to know by visiting the website, thelongandtheshortpodcast.com/bigideaslab. B-I-G-I-D-E-A-S-L-A-B. You all know how to spell Big Ideas Lab, but I just spelt it for you anyway.

Jen: Now on to this week's episode.

Jen: Hello, Peter Shepherd.

Pete: Hello, Jennifer Waldman.

Jen: I want to revisit a topic that we've spoken about on several episodes of this podcast, the topic being routines. But I'd like to revisit them through the lens of what routines mean when everyday life is, well, routine.

Pete: Yeah, we've talked about morning routines. We've talked about evening routines. I guess we haven't talked about COVID routines. This is The Long and The Short Of It.

Jen: Alright, I cannot even remember what question led to this thought. But I was doing a Facebook Live over the weekend where I was taking questions from people, and one of them sparked this idea about routines. And as you know, and as most of our listeners know, you and I both are, we like our routines. We like our morning routine, and now I even like my evening routine, thanks to you. And I have been feeling sort of strange in the mornings lately.

Pete: Hmm.

Jen: For a good portion of our American summer, your Australian winter, I was getting up really early, going for a run, brewing my coffee, reading my book outside, and I was really enjoying it. And then it became too routine because the rest of my day doesn't have my New York City variety that my life typically has. And so the whole day was just feeling like one long routine, and I was missing newness. I was missing those creative sparks. So, I kind of want to dig into that. But I want to know first, what's your reaction to that?

Pete: Well, it's so interesting because my reaction is like...my reaction is in a pre-COVID world, routine and a morning routine was really important because there was so much variety, so many inputs, so much chaos (both good and bad chaos) outside of our morning and evening routines. Because we might be going across to this place, or going to the city, or like going to a meeting, or like shuffling around our physical location and, obviously, like a bunch of inputs as a result. And so, what's interesting is now it's almost the opposite. Which is, everything in the middle is so routine.

Jen: Mm-hmm.

Pete: Like, I've been working from home out of my apartment since March, which is six or seven months almost at the point of recording this. And so, it's like the...it's almost, it feels like the inverse, in a COVID world. Where the routine at the bookend of the day maybe isn't serving us as much as it used to because the in the middle is just so routine now. Like, I'm 100% guaranteed to be working out of my apartment. There's no question about that. There's no deviation.

Jen: Right. I've actually felt my, I don't know if I should call it my mind or my brain, but one of the two rebelling against this routine in the morning in recent weeks. So, I sit down to read and it's like I am flooded with so many other thoughts that I've had to start keeping paper inside my book, so I can just get the thoughts out of my head and write them down so that I can focus on the sentences I'm reading. Yesterday, I literally got through one page in thirty minutes, because I just kept like leaning back and staring into space with all these thoughts swirling around. My brain is done with the routine right now.

Pete: Wow. So the question that comes into my head then is like...and I'm sure we've probably talked about this back in those episodes that we mentioned, both Morning Routines and Evening Routines, but maybe the answer has changed because of COVID. The question is like, so what is a morning routine for? What is an evening routine for? Why do we even place a value in those things?

Jen: Well, I think to your earlier point, it's like it helps provide structure in a life that can sometimes be chaotic. That when you have something you can rely on, it provides you a sense of groundedness, that feeling of presence. Like, "I know who I am in this moment, and I'm setting myself up for the day centered with myself." But when you then don't move from that place, it can, it can be a little much. So I had this experience earlier this week where on Tuesday, I taught a brand new class that I had never taught before. And I was so jazzed. And afterwards, I said to myself, my team, and I might have even said it to you, "I feel more like myself right now than I have felt in the last six months." And it was because of that feeling of doing something new, feeling a bit risky about it, the anticipation of, "How is this going to go?" So I know that for me, like right now, I'm looking to create more opportunities for risk taking. And I'm just sort of following this idea that I'm breaking my morning routine, and I'm breaking my evening routine, because the middle of the day is so routine. So, I didn't go for my run today. I had intended to go for a run tonight, but now it's raining, so next time I'll check the weather report. But I'm, you know, I'm going to change the times of day that I'm exercising. I'm going to change the times of day when I'm doing my writing. I'm just kind of like, "Change it up."

Pete: Mmm. Okay, I love this because what you're not saying is, "I'm going to eliminate all of these things from my day." Because what we, and what you, I think, recognize is exercising, reading, (for me, writing and meditating), are like, they're still important. In fact, they're probably more important now than ever.

Jen: Yeah.

Pete: Because of the strain on our mental health. And so it's not about throwing those away, is what I'm hearing from you. It's actually about like shuffling them into different parts of your day.

Jen: Ooh, okay. Mind explosion is happening. What is the difference between a routine and a practice? So, meditation is a practice. Exercise is a practice. Writing is a practice. A practice doesn't have to be routine.

Pete: Mmm.

Jen: So if you do your meditating at night instead of in the morning, for example, do you no longer have a practice? No, you still have a practice. You just don't have a routine anymore. So what you just said really resonated with me, that the idea is to look at the things that are meaningful and important, things that you know you want to keep in your life, but perhaps just shuffle the deck.

Pete: Yeah, yeah. Huh. It's funny, I said this to my partner, Tracy, two days ago, actually. Where, for in terms of how my days tend to be structured (I think a lot of people probably know this listening, I might have talked about it), but because I do a lot of work with folks in America, like you and like others, my mornings are often heavily weighted to Zoom calls with folks around the world. And it's so interesting because in the last couple of weeks, I've created some space in the mornings to almost like...intentionally and sometimes by chance, but I've sort of had this thought of like, "What would it look like to not be on Zoom at 6am? Like, that might be fun." And because for me often that exercise portion comes later in the afternoon, because that's when America goes to sleep and blah, blah, blah...it's a whole thing. Anyway. So the other day, I had like a morning free. Actually, I had two mornings free in a row, Monday and Tuesday. And I awoke, and I was like, "Oh, I could do, I could go for a run now. And I could, I could have a swim now." And I did it. And it's the same activity, exactly the same activity as what I would usually do at 3 or 4pm. And I felt unbelievable. I was like, "Oh my god, this is wild." Like, I'd forgotten how good it is to get the exercise out of the way in the morning. And in hearing you talk about this, and in the last ten minutes unpacking this in my head, I actually wonder if it's, it's less about the fact that I did it in the morning and more about the fact that I did it differently to how I usually do it. So, the deck was shuffled. So for you, it's actually the inverse. Which is like, instead of the morning, maybe do it in the afternoon. It's not necessarily the time of day, but it's more the fact that it's different to what you're used to. Just not that long ago, it might have been a few weeks ago, I guess I was kind of getting too routine with my morning routine. Or I was struggling, I was coming up against some tension with the morning pages, write some things down, do my Five Minute Journal. (This is before I hop on a Zoom call.) And I was like, ah, I guess I was feeling stuck with my routine. And what I've realized, or the assertion dot connection that I made was because it was happening at the same table that everything else in my life has been happening for the last seven months. Which is where you eat your dinner, where you eat your breakfast, where you eat your lunch, where you do your work, where you like do your morning routine, all of that was on the same table.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And so I actually created (listeners can't see, I'm pointing to it for Jen), I actually created what I call my Noodle Nook. That's right. A Noodle Nook. And I took away like a bunch of stuff from it. And so, all it has now is I think there's three notebooks, because I have a lot of notebooks. One of them is the Five Minute Journal. One of them is a book that I write in each morning. And then there's another one which is about capturing stories. And so that space, that desk around the corner is only for those things.

Jen: Mmm.

Pete: And so, I don't eat dinner there. I don't do work there. I only go there when I'm like, "I need to noodle. I need to think. I want to write." And that's like, that's been quite profound for me. Is just like, having a dedicated space. Which feels so obvious now that I'm saying it out loud. But I think it relates to all of this.

Jen: I think you're right. My daughter started school on Tuesday. And, you know...

Pete: Back to school!

Jen: Back to school. That's a whole other episode. She is learning virtually. And so, she spent the weekend setting up her learning area. And it's actually quite funny that she goes down and she has breakfast in the morning. And then I say to her, "Want me to walk you to school?"

Pete: Ah, that's so cute.

Jen: Like we would do, if we were doing it in person. She's like, "Yeah." And then she holds my hand and I walk her to school, and then she has her day. But you're right, that having that designated area...somebody in the studio pointed out to me that one of the reasons why everything starts to bleed together, at least, I don't know if you experienced this in Melbourne, but as a New Yorker, part of what's built into your events is travel time in New York. Like you go one place, you do whatever happens in that place. Then you get on the subway, you go to another place. Then you walk ten blocks and you go to the other place. And since all that transit time has been removed, everything just sort of feels like it bleeds together. So something else that I have been paying attention to for several weeks is ensuring that everything feels like it has an ending, and then a transition moment before the next thing starts. Because I had gotten into a very bad habit of backing my events up to each other, since I could. And that just had to stop.

Pete: Yeah. You're like, "This is great. There's no commute time. I'm just going to do back-to-back-to-back-to-back-to-back.

Jen: That's right. That's right. And I needed to build in the time. So, I have done that.

Pete: Huh. I feel like this is an episode where I'm looking at my past behavior over the last month and realizing that it all relates to this exact thing that we're noodling on. So I have another example, which is I have a friend who runs a gym, and he very generously has given us a bunch of gym equipment because gyms aren't open here in Melbourne. And so, I have like this gym equipment. And for the probably first four months of the last six-month quarantine lockdown isolated life that we're living here, I had it basically stored in my living room and I would take it out onto the, into my courtyard and do a workout. And I noticed over time, progressively, I did it less and less and less and less and less. And when I did it, I'd be like still on an email. Or I would, you know, do it the moment a Zoom call finished, I would start it and then back it up right up to another Zoom call, to your point. And the weather turned. Well, it was winter here for the last few months, and so I couldn't really go into the courtyard anymore because it was raining. And I was like, "What am I going to do?" And so, I actually moved all the gym equipment to the car park, which is underneath the apartment building I'm in. So, it's like an under cover car park. And I put all my gym equipment down there and I found, all of a sudden, that I was reinvigorated to "go to the gym" every day. Because my practice was, "I have to leave the apartment. I have to go down the elevator. And then I open, and it's like, here's the gym and I'm at the gym." And it's like made this profound difference, even though it's literally, you know, all of seven feet below me. But it feels like I went to the gym. Isn't that weird?

Jen: No, I think it makes a lot of sense. And so, what this is pointing me toward right now is the future. Because when we got into this COVID moment, if you had asked either of us back in March when we went into lockdown, "What's going to be happening six months from now," I don't think either one of us would have said, "We're still in lockdown and nothing has changed."

Pete: In fact, it's stricter here in Melbourne than it was. So it's like, if anything it's getting harder.

Jen: So I think knowing that there's not really an end date in sight, and knowing that we are in this really for the long haul, perhaps maybe the wake up call that I'm having for my future self is I'm going to need to have many more opportunities to shift my routines. So I might end up getting in a new routine that feels like it works for a month, or six weeks, or something. But then that routine might grow stale. And I've got to stay open to, "This is not working anymore because it's too repetitive now. I've got to find a new way to spice it up."

Pete: Spice it up. And I guess to, as we wrap this up, to close I would ask you and maybe just like offer as a prompter, like how you might become aware of the fact that you are sick of the routine and you do need to change it up. One question that came mind for me was like: is this still serving me? Or, how is this still serving me?

Jen: There's a lyric from the Broadway musical City of Angels, which is now repeating in my head, Peter.

Pete: Alright. Are you going to sing it to me? Or...?

Jen: No, I will speak it in my most dramatic voice.

Pete: Please.

Jen: "Your new routine is to routine. It needs work."

Pete: And that is The Long and The Short Of It.