What Systems Make Renewal Possible? |
The taxi is in line, waiting for a rider. Photo credit: Jill Hoffert |
Dear Empowered Reader,
Twyla Tharp starts every day the same way. She wakes, puts on workout clothes, and walks outside to hail a cab to the gym. This is her morning ritual. In her book The Creative Habit, she explains that the habit isn't the two-hour workout that follows; it's the moment she raises her arm for the taxi. By the time she's in the car, the decision has already been made. The system did the work her willpower didn't have to.
I have my own version of that taxi, and it happens the night before. Every evening, I lay out two outfits, one for work, one for my workout. I prep breakfast and lunch so they're just waiting for me in the morning. And I set my workout clothes somewhere I can grab them fast, mid-morning or whenever the window opens. None of this is glamorous. It's genuinely just laundry and a couple of Pyrex containers.
But here's what it does: it removes every decision from the moment I'm least equipped to make one. I don't wake up and negotiate with myself about whether today's the day I work out. The clothes are already there, already easy, already done. The workout stops being a hassle to talk myself into and becomes the next obvious step in a sequence I set up twelve hours earlier.
That's the whole trick. I'm not more disciplined at 6 a.m. than anyone else. I just made sure 6 a.m. me had nothing left to decide. |
A typical breakfast. Steel cut oats, peanut butter, banana, and chia seeds. All ready for me when I need it! |
Charles Duhigg's original habit loop, cue, routine, reward, has held up for over a decade for a reason: it explains why a structure becomes automatic. But the more interesting question habit researchers have circled since is whether automatic is the same as useful. A habit loop doesn't check its own math. It doesn't know if the routine it's protecting still serves the person running it. It just knows the loop worked once, so it keeps offering the loop.
That's the distinction I want to sit in this issue: a system's strength, its ability to run without your conscious input, is also its weak point. The same automaticity that gets me into workout clothes without a debate is the automaticity that keeps someone else checking email at 9pm four years after the job that required it ended.
Here's what doesn't make it into most habit-and-productivity content: familiarity feels like support. That's the trick. A routine you've run for fifteen years feels load-bearing simply because it's old, not because you've ever actually tested whether it still holds weight. We rarely audit our systems because auditing requires suspecting they might be wrong, and most of us built our systems precisely so we wouldn't have to keep deciding.
So the systems that are quietly draining us get to hide in plain sight, wearing the same "this is just how I do things" costume as the systems that are actually renewing us.
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This week, I'm not asking you to overhaul anything. My outfit-and-breakfast system didn't start as a grand plan; it started because I played tennis in college and tennis practice started at 5 am. I valued every bit of sleep I could get, so I started picking out my outfits and prepping meals the night before so I could sleep until the last minute.
Now it is your turn. Pick one automatic routine in your own life and trace it back to the moment it started. Ask what it was actually built to do. Not what it's for now, in retrospect. What job it was hired for, originally. Then ask if that job still needs doing.
An affirmation I can look clearly at what holds me without needing to tear it all down. Seeing my systems is not the same as abandoning them; it's how I find out which ones are still mine.
A practice Pick one daily or weekly structure, a routine, a ritual, a recurring commitment. Write down: What it was originally built to do What it's actually doing for you now Whether those two answers match
If they match, that's a system worth reinforcing. If they don't, you've just found your next small edit.
Reflection questions What's one structure in your life that still earns its place, and how do you know? What's one you've never questioned simply because it's familiar? If you designed today's routines from scratch, knowing what you know now, what would you keep exactly as it is?
Which Season Are You In?
Growth doesn't happen in a straight line; it happens in seasons. Answer eight quick questions to find out which one you're in right now, and what might actually help you move through it. Don't overthink it; just pick the answer that's closest to how you're feeling at the moment.
Take the quiz
Take care, Dear Reader,
Julie Founder Empower Possible
Sources: Charles Duhigg, The Power of Habit (habit loop: cue, routine, reward); Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit |
Changing Habits by Tom Wright |
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