#17 Routines vs Rhythms
On building routines like the tidal waves
Good morning!
For Re: this week I was reflecting on a passage from one of Virginia Woolf’s letters, in which she talks about rhythm in writing like a tidal wave that carries sentences and words. I’ll paste the quote below because it is beautiful, and relevant.
Style is a very simple matter; it is all rhythm. Once you get that, you can't use the wrong words. But on the other hand here am I sitting after half the morning, crammed with ideas, and visions, and so on, and can't dislodge them, for lack of the right rhythm. Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than any words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before it makes words to fit it.
These past weeks, I’ve also been circling around the theme of consistency and the different ways it appears in our lives—mainly in the form of routines, which is what I’d like to write about today, but also in topics like quitting, which as its inverse, is still about consistency.
Many of my friends describe me as someone who has and loves her routines. I’m not entirely sure what gave them this impression, because I feel like on the outside, I’m a very sporadic person with scattered routines. Maybe what they mean is “rituals,” because I do love those small, stacked moments in life. The way I like to make my coffee every morning, send a voice note to a friend, but most prominently, how nothing in the world can make me rush to something if I don’t feel fulfilled by the preceding moments that will end once I switch to a different task, mode, or place. In Turkish there’s word for that/me: ehli keyf, or aheste. I don’t know if their translation exists in English but in French, it would be a bon vivant. I guess roughly it would translate to, as the internet tells me, “someone who lives a relaxed and pleasure-filled life.”
While I love the idea of routines, I’ve lately struggled to keep them up in certain areas of my life, particularly with my gym routine. I used to be impressively consistent, and I don’t say this to impress you, but because I had surprised (and was impressed with) myself. I had schemes, leg and shoulder days structured; I would drag myself even on the coldest day or the darkest hours. I don’t know if this will make sense to you, but because I take the tube and then walk 10-15 minutes to my gym, I always felt like it was the repetition of that commute that I had gotten used to and not the act of training itself.
And essentially, that’s how you build habits. Both through motivation (you have to have a reason, something at stake) and through repetition—having done something so many times that you no longer need to think about it. Decision-making can be the worst enemy of building routines and habits, and even paralyzing at times. In that very famous book everyone has read (Atomic Habits), there was a section about how you should already decide on when and where you are going to do something (the habits which you want to build) and never leave that decision on its specifics to the moment you’re going to be doing it.
We are also often told that the key to productivity, or even creativity, is a well-structured routine. The discipline of repetition, the predictability of habit, the security of a scheduled life all point to the surest way to accomplishing what we set out to do. But there’s something extremely stifling about strict routines. Or rather, the way that we have constructed and maybe even idealized the concept and idea of a routine. It feels like an unnatural imposition on the shifting, perhaps “tidal” nature of energy, motivation, and inspiration.
Some days we are pulled toward deep focus, and on other days, we are scattered and restless. Our bodies move in cycles where not every day or week or even season we are the same. And our individual bodies also move in different ways and cycles. So I started seeking a definition of routine that understands this cyclic nature. Could we think of one that moves instead like the tides, rising and retreating in response to the natural rhythms of our energy, seasons, and creative flow?
Through Virginia Woolf, I started thinking of this in terms of rhythms: the notion of a tidal routine which accounts for the fluctuations—ebbs and flows in our motivation and energy. It recognizes that discipline is necessary, but so is the ability to adapt and move with the current rather than against it. It rides the waves, rather than trying to master or silence them.
Not to attempt at a formula, but I sort of took the structure and framework of a tidal way to see if it might apply to constructing routines. I think of expansive and receding phases, for instance. The former being periods of heightened energy and productivity, where focus comes easily and in bursts. These phases might last for hours, days, or even weeks, during which structured time blocks feel effortless and productive. (The month of December was like this for me, I was inseparable from my work/writing.)
Receding phases, on the other hand, are times when focus is fragmented, energy is low, and external demands may disrupt the usual flow. Instead of resisting these moments, I find that a tidal routine might make space for them—allowing for softer tasks, reflection, rest, incubation, and acceptance. (This was March, for me.)
And I also found that we may need core anchors that in some ways are these fixed points in the day or week that creates stability. For me, this is morning reading—because any other time of the day, I find it almost impossible to concentrate or allow for myself to read for leisure. These need not be rigidly timed but serve as gravitational centers around which everything else orbits. As a freelancer, I also find value in some fixity in commitments: publishing my essays each week on Sunday or volleyball practice.
I don’t think I have an answer yet about whether this tidal approach to routine works—or what works for routines. If you do, please let me know. All I know is that nothing in life, including progress, is linear. Some workouts are effortless and exhilarating, while others feel sluggish and forced. A few weeks ago, I found myself saying: I just don’t want to lift any more weights than the ones that I’m already carrying, including my own body, which feels heavier on some days and lighter on others. I also don’t know if recognizing the natural ebb and flow will prevent this frustration, but I know that a lot of this frustration comes from imposing an order onto something inherently cyclical.
Perhaps it’s about trust? Trust that, like the tides, the ebb is just as necessary as the flow—like the bow of an arch that needs recessive tension to strike through. And that movement will return in its own time. (Until then foam rollers and deep heat gel for me—also looking for a good TENS machine if anyone has recommendations.)
Until next time,
Melis
Here’s a postcard for you, of some more waves. And its description from the Mets Museum Online Archive:
Later in life, Homer increasingly edited his paintings, clarifying his compositions and their meanings. In 1895, when he first exhibited this epic scene of a winter storm at Prouts Neck, it included two figures crouching on the rocks in the lower left corner. Between 1896 and 1900, the artist eliminated the human presence and intensified the spray from the crashing waves. When the refined painting was exhibited at the Union League Club in New York in 1901, the critic for the New-York Tribune appreciated the new emphasis on pure nature and admired the painting as a representation of "three fundamental facts, the rugged strength of the rocks, the weighty, majestic movement of the sea and the large atmosphere of great natural spaces unmarked by the presence of puny man."