Habit or Routine?

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit” - Aristotle

I don’t normally quote Aristotle, but when I do, it’s for dramatic purposes at the beginning of a LinkedIn article.

This is my favorite photo of my Cairn terrier Cosmo, with a bone he stole from our neighbors’ garage. As is the case with many of us, his eyes were bigger than his stomach. Unfortunately I lost Cosmo last December due to liver failure. Sixteen years is a long time for any dog to live, and I was lucky to have that much time with him. It occurred to me in the weeks following his death how much he was a part of my life and routine. While I think of him often, it’s most prevalent when I wake up in the morning, when I return home from work, and just before bed. Taking him outside during these times had been a routine of mine for sixteen years – a routine that has been hard to shake.

After the New Year, like many people, I began thinking about how I could improve myself. My experience with Cosmo had me thinking about the power of routines and how we don’t realize how “routine” our lives can be. I also wondered what the difference was between routine and habit. To me, the word habit seems to have a negative connotation. I immediately think of bad habits. For example, I have the habit of watching a rerun of Two and a half Men when I go to bed. Probably not the best use of my time, but I’ve been doing it for so long, it’s like a lullaby. I have to have it to go to sleep. Of course, in my defense, I only watch the episodes with Charlie Sheen, as the ones with Aston Kutcher are awful.

I decided to take to the internet to learn the difference between habits and routines and not surprisingly, there’s a lot of information out there. Apparently psychologists have been thinking about this way before me. They also have a way of making simple concepts seem really confusing. For example, as one person put it, “You need a routine, in order to build a habit. But you can't have habits, without proper routines”. Cutting through all the hyperbole, I came to the conclusion that they really are the same thing. It’s semantics. Some people refer to brushing their teeth every day as a habit, others call it a routine.

Whether or not taking the dog out was a habit or routine, doesn’t’ really matter. The difference is that not taking the dog out would have immediate negative consequences, like having to clean up the inevitable mess on the floor. That’s why so many people fail when it comes to their new year’s resolutions. There’s no immediate negative consequence. It’s may be something that they need to do, or want to do, but not something that they have to do, at least on a given day. Take working out, for example. You may want to lose weight, need to lose weight, or even have to lose weight (doctor’s orders), but skipping one day won’t hurt, right? The problem is, one day turns into two, then three, then…..routine over. We’ve all heard it takes 21 days to create a habit, but the reality is it can take much longer. And one break from the routine can kill it.

For many of our Executive MBA Students, it has been 10 to 20 years since they have been in school. They have careers, families and routines. Busy routines. Many are apprehensive about finding the time in their daily lives to study. Their current routine has to change and a new one needs to begin.

So, how do we set up a scenario where we do things repeatedly, without fail, to the point they become automatic, or routine? Do we create our own negative consequence? We could, but chances are, we’ll cheat.

So what’s the answer? I I think the best we can do is set positive routines and work as hard as we can to not break them. Don’t feel up to working out? At least continue the routine. Drive to the gym or do at least two minutes of that Jane Fonda tape in the basement. It keeps the pattern going. Just don’t start a routine of only halfway doing something, because this too will be hard to break. If all else fails, put some fake poop on the living room floor as a reminder of what happens when you don’t do what you should be doing…