The Engine of Joy

I am a creature of habits and I love my daily routines. We all know that habit stacking is a useful way to build a new habit. Everyone has many daily tasks that are already ingrained: things like brushing one's teeth, toilet and bathing. Why not use them like pegs to hang on fresh new habits?

To build a new habit, you just tag an additional task to an existing one so that the incremental effort of performing it just gets carried along easily by the existing routine. Daily, weekly and monthly routines are like the piston movements of a four-stroke engine. Once the engine is started, you have that regular supply of energy to power anything. Why not a new habit? As long as you align them along the momentum of your existing actions, it will move forward.

So I meditate before I brush my teeth, read while I'm in the toilet and listen to the day's news in the shower.  I journal and listen to some classical music or jazz just before showering again at the end of the day. In bed, I read a poem before succumbing to sleep. I find poetry very relaxing as it is like music--there is no plot or information that the writer is attempting to convey, only an experience. Words are used in novel ways, triggering new associations of ideas and images in the mind. There's nothing to figure out--only the beauty of words in themselves. It's the perfect bedtime balm.

This is my daily cycle of tasks. And then there's a weekly one too. Blogging comes at the end of the week, as a kind of reflective and creative exercise, helping to assimilate my thoughts and integrate everything I've learned over the week. I write so many emails daily, spouting cliche phrases most of the time that being able to blog at the end of a hectic work-week on any topic of my interest, feels extremely liberating. Here I get to expound on anything that strikes my fancy. And I'm comforted by the fact that no one is reading this. 

I have other weekly habits. Exercise is one of them. Tagging on to it is my opportunity to listen to my audiobook while I'm doing that. Habits that kill two birds with one stone are the best. One can stack habit upon habit until one's live becomes a rich, productive and healthy one, automatically. 

Dread your Monday blues? Make it interesting by turning it into a meatless one. I've practiced being a weekly vegetarian for more than a decade now. Meatless Mondays save me the trouble of figuring out what and where to eat. It's something I look forward to on the day of the week, because I get to eat something different and it feels like a clean and healthy diet reset.

Time is the fuel that powers our habit engine and propels our life forward. We just have to design an architecture around it that taps onto this powerful source of energy.  Do not waste time lamenting how time flies. Open up your sails and let its winds drive you forward. The result is a self-running engine that produces joy.