[june 2024] routine vs. ritual: using little joys to self-motivate
or: client successes, workshop successes, and a long essay on why some people can never seem to make good habits stick
hello and happy summer! i am doing very well, which is noteworthy in that i am not often doing well, let alone for more than a week or so at a time. i think my wellness is due in large part to the way i’ve reframed the idea of a daily routine in a way that is so deceptively simple it doesn’t seem like it should work. but it does. and i wanted to share what that frame is and why i think it’s so effective for me, a person who has always struggled to stick to routines and make lasting good habits.
i think this is the longest essay i’ve ever written for a newsletter. be warned, it gets heavy in some parts.
news & announcements
my coaching and editing services are finally all on one page
i updated my calendly profile to be a simple landing page for booking any of my services. i get a lot of emails asking, “do you do [service i do in fact do]?” so now hopefully those who want to know the greater scope of my freelance services can just peruse my calendly. (i still need to update my website though.)
most of my one-off services like developmental editing are now pay-at-booking, so you can find pricing there as well. to begin ongoing coaching and accountability, or if you’re not sure which of my services is the best fit, you can now book an initial consultation for $30.
a client success story!
i’m deliriously pleased to announce that my client Kat is publishing her debut novel WASP’S NEST with Celadon Books! this is a huge win and i am so, so happy for Kat and excited to see her wonderful novel put into the world. i feel very honored to have been part of this journey and i can’t wait to see where her writing career takes her. congrats, Kat!
Kat has a newsletter where she shares insights on writing and the practice thereof, and you can also check out her instagram.
another client success story!
my client Anna was accepted to Miami University’s creative writing MFA program! i’ve been working with Anna for a few years, and i’m so thrilled that she’ll have the opportunity to complete the same program i did and which laid the foundation for my writing career. congrats, Anna!
OFIC Mag’s first annual doubles issue launches July 1
we’ve been working hard putting together our first annual novella issue, which features the lovely, Ghibli-esque “Adelina and the Bug Parties” and the mind-bending time travel thriller “Missing Ange,” two pieces on polar opposite sides of the same aesthetic spectrum of intricate world-building and bittersweet love.
be sure to subscribe to our Patreon to guarantee your physical copy!
the FAW spring session has come to a close
we had a great spring session this year—phenomenal work submitted, insightful feedback offered. my main goal this year has been to focus on FAW by improving the workshop itself and keeping the community active between sessions, and i’m happy to say it’s been going really well. weekly accountability meetings have been a hit and the discord is super active, and i still have more ideas i want to implement through the rest of the year and into next.
if you want to join us, there’s…
one week left to apply for the Fanauthor Workshop summer asynch session
i’m running an asynchronous summer workshop for people who want to be part of the FAW community but who can’t make the weekly meetings of the full sessions work in their schedule. participants will read up to 2 pieces presented each week by fellow participants, write crit letters, and participate in discussion over discord.
the only required meeting is an individual 30-minute zoom call with me any time during the two weeks prior to the start of workshop. we'll use that time to go over the syllabus together.
applications close June 14! if you can’t apply but want to support the workshop, you can reblog the tumblr post and share it around to fanpeople who might be interested in participating.
OFIC Mag submissions close June 30
submissions for our fall issue close at the end of this month! we increased our word count to 15k, so feel free to send us some deliciously long one-shots.
routine vs. ritual
part 1: routines
mornings have always been one of the greatest conflicts of my life. i am a morning person, you see. i love waking up early. i love sitting outside with a cup of coffee and reading a book while the sun rises. at least, i love the idea of it.
the problem is that i am so, so sleepy. in spirit, i am a 12am to 6:30am sleeper, the sort of person who only needs 6ish hours of sleep a night and still has plenty of energy to get everything done in a day. in body, i am a 1am to 10am sleeper, often with a 1-hour mid-afternoon nap. i was diagnosed with narcolepsy over ten years ago which is a fact i constantly forget because it pales in comparison to my other myriad disorders, but there was definitely a time when my exhaustion and chronic sleep deprivation ruled my life.
with diligent sleep hygiene and medication, these past two years i’ve been able to maintain a 12am to 8am sleep schedule. and with it, i’ve been able to develop a morning routine that works for me:
8-9am: wake up, take meds, make coffee, draft the day’s schedule and to do list, read newspaper
9-10am: seasonal reading, generally nonfiction (see newsletter on serving your seasons, which is kind of an important prerequisite for this post)
10am-12pm: write
that last one is the most important part of my day. i will bend the earth to maintain my 2-hour morning writing window. i call these “golden hours.” even if my sleep schedule falters and i wake up at 10, that just means i go straight from coffee to writing. some days these two hours are not particularly fruitful, but the point is that they are my highest priority and everything else revolves around them.
the reason they’re so important isn’t any kind of “get the hardest part of your day done first” mentality, but that i have the highest verbal reasoning shortly after waking up. no matter how shitty i feel, i can write a few sentences at 10am. golden hours are specifically for generation, brand new words on a blank page, shitty first draft stuff, except golden hour words don’t tend to be shitty. these hours are golden for a reason: my writing is at its best during them.
it took years to develop a morning routine and turn it into a habit. that’s partly because, as you might imagine, it’s pretty hard to change the entire trajectory of your life to accommodate the fact it takes me 4 hours to start my day. i didn’t fit the routine into my life; i changed my life to create the routine. i can’t emphasize enough how tired i was from ages 6 to 23. my sleep disorder was so enormous and insipid that i couldn’t even look at it. if you were to go back in time at any point during those 17 years and ask me, “if you could be doing anything right now, what would you be doing?” the answer would always be, “sleeping.” a coworker once pointed out to me, “you know, you should want to be awake,” which is not a thought that had ever occurred to me. and it wasn’t until a doctor asked me (what i thought was) apropos nothing, “if i walked out of this room and turned off the light, how long would it take you to fall asleep?” to which i said, “instantly.”
one sleep study referral later, my test results indicated i had managed to hit REM sleep within a minute at 2pm. when i asked the doctor how long it was supposed to take you to reach REM, he said, “you’re not supposed to be able to reach REM sleep in the middle of the day. at all.”
for the next 7 years, i made a series of difficult decisions that would allow me to accommodate my sleep disorder, which in turn would allow me to create my 4-hour morning routine, and which would finally maybe possibly allow me to feel a little happiness. i will never be able to work a full-time job and i’ll probably always be living under the poverty level, but i will at least be sleeping enough.
the other reason it took so long to develop this routine is that a great many neurodivergent people, myself included, cannot create habits without significant, nearly impossible amounts of effort. “it takes 30 days to develop a habit,” people say. but if you don’t have enough time in your day, or energy, or money, or focus—if you aren’t living within your means, then no, you won’t be able to develop good-but-difficult habits until you accumulate a surplus of the thing you don’t have enough of.
i notice that older people, greatest generation and baby boomers, have healthy and effective daily routines, and more importantly, the energy to do them. when i visit my aunt (who is widowed and lives alone), i marvel at her ability to work a full-time job and come home and cook a delicious meal and clean her beautiful house. similarly, whenever i do artist residencies, i’m stunned to encounter other adults who don’t seem to struggle to take care of themselves. they eat well and exercise daily and have a healthy work-life balance. these are creatives, people who are stereotyped as wild and dysfunctional, and they are some of the happiest and most well-adjusted people i’ve ever met.
there’s no one thing to blame here. i could say capitalism destroys happiness because it keeps people from meeting all their needs. i could say that the invention of the atomic bomb instilled a worldwide fear of extinction that has rotted the very fabric of living. i could say that as a woman i was taught to take care of others instead of myself and so self-neglect is a result of patriarchy. i could say that as a disabled person there aren’t enough mental healthcare resources to help me accommodate myself. i could say the world is stacked against me and you and everyone else all for different, awful reasons and that even though advances in technology have certainly made life more convenient it has also paradoxically become so much harder.
i could say those things. but i’m not going to, because i’m tired of being buried beneath the bigger picture. accepting universal entropy does not help me put on my shoes and walk out the door. lamenting corporate greed doesn’t encourage me to eat vegetables. doomscrolling social media and feeling connected to everything in the world all the time is not an effective substitute for intimacy. tracking every possible metric of my life to measure my own progress and maximize my productivity does not abate my worsening sense of isolation.
i’ve been living for a long time now on the fumes of hope, biding my time for an eventual and inevitable upswing where i would meet someone and fall in love one more time and have a baby and make enough money to live comfortably and maybe stay alive long enough to meet my grandchildren.
but last fall, a series of minor misfortunes led me to a realization: none of those things are going to happen. rather, hoping for those things won’t increase their chances of occurring, and spending so much emotional energy on hope for the future is hindering my progress as a writer and my happiness in the present. hope is the well from which most of my creative inspiration comes—i write the kind of life i want to live instead of living.
one of the hopes i often write about is achieving a routine. in nearly every story i write there will come some sort of time-passing montage during which the main characters settle into an easy pattern of living, sometimes happily and sometimes not. when i was thirteen i wrote a series of short stories called “Soap Suds” in which an unhinged boy named Jeremiah goes around town playing little pranks on the townspeople such as drawing innocuous images on car windows with soap. he’s haunted by an invisible friend who is constantly taunting him and telling him to kill himself. he’s too mentally unwell to work, and although i never delved into his particular mental health constellation, in my head, he is simply too sensitive and lonely to live a full life. in other words, he is very much the shape of the person i became twenty years later. i didn’t intend for “Soap Suds” to be a tragedy; in fact it was the most romantic notion my young self could devise—despite his struggles, Jeremiah found comfort and relief in his daily routine.
my imagination has always been inhabited by a kind of glossy-coated domestic bliss covering the ugly grit of reality. i love the idea of a single day, repeated indefinitely, where i make healthy choices and do not overextend myself, and the rigidity of my diurnal cycle thus alleviates the darker burdens i’ve carried through most of my life. like Goldilocks, i am always looking for the thing that is just right.
if there is one thing i have learned in the long journey of establishing my morning routine, it is that routine is accommodation. the key to a good routine is that it is so manageable that it’s effortless, thoughtless. i never have to make myself take my meds or open a book each morning. getting down a thousand words between 10 and 12 isn’t a chore. it’s not always easy, but i don’t dread it or force myself to do it.
but having such an effective morning routine brings to light how much i still struggle through all the other parts of life. i’ve never quite gotten the hang of consistently feeding myself, exercising, or keeping my space clean—things that take a combination of physical energy and executive function that i have simply never mastered. i’ve gone through spans of time where i’ve managed to hold one of those things in hand while the other two fell, but invariably i’d drop that one too and return to the awkward perma-juggle of self-care responsibilities.
with the same irony that i am a morning person who struggles to wake up early, i’m also a results-driven person who can’t feel a sense of accomplishment. the truth is that it doesn’t matter how successful i am, by the time i’ve gotten a win i’m already working toward the next one. my sudden loss of hope last fall freed me from the burden of trying to control my future, and forced me to reframe the way i live my life. if i’m not working toward major milestones, what’s the reason for doing anything? after many months of consideration, the answer i’ve come up with is: i can do things for the sake of doing them, and not for the benefit of their result.
part 2: rituals
it started with a candle.
there were no candles in my house growing up because 1) i was terrified of fire, and 2) my dad couldn’t stand anything scented. he hated the smell of nail polish and acetone so much that my sister and i had to do our nails in the garage. so to me, candles have always been a thing for other people.
and then out of nowhere a couple months ago, i thought, it would be nice to have a candle.
so i bought a little lemon-scented candle and i lit it and it made me happy. i wasn’t expecting to have an emotional reaction to a candle. but i found myself carrying it from room to room—my bedroom while i worked, my living room while i watched tv, the kitchen while i cooked. i didn’t even really like the smell of it. but it was a little light in a little jar and it kept me company.
candles are so intrinsically connected to rituals that i can’t even figure out what phrase to google to research the broader context of why candles are associated with rituals. humans naturally create intentional patterns of behavior and go, “you know what would make this better? an itty bitty flame.”
like candles, i’m aware that rituals exist but they’ve never been part of my life, except in the broadest social definitions. my life has always lacked in culture—i grew up on fast food and frozen meals, i have no religion, i don’t identify with a specific style of music or dance. i’ve only been to a few weddings, all of them casual. i’ve never been to a funeral, only the small memorial gatherings my family holds when we’ve lost someone. everything is casual, informal, small. ritual is, by definition, formal. i have no formality in my life and therefore no rituals.
i even shirk formalities imposed on me. i identify as atheist—away from religion. i identify as agender—away from gender. i identify as asexual—away from sex. i’m up in the air on aromanticism but given that i haven’t been in a relationship in over a decade i’m going to go ahead and chuck that one onto the pile too—away from romance. i am by nature asocial—away from society.
rituals are formal, formality is performative, and performance is participation. being away from everything, having no rituals, means there’s no participation, no meaningful patterned behavior that might make me feel like a member of a community or even an active player in my own life.
when you live without candles—without the things that define what it even means to be human—you have no light to take from room to room. you wander around in the dark, formless, waiting to run into happiness and love and fulfillment by accident. you rely too much on wanting instead of doing.
in Roman usage, a ritis was “the proven way of doing something.” aside from certain fantasy contexts, you don’t usually do a ritual for external results; you do a ritual out of tradition, lineage, culture, or spiritual satisfaction. you do it for the sake of doing it.
so what’s the difference between a routine and a ritual?
a routine is habitual; a ritual is intentional
a routine is thoughtless; a ritual is thoughtful
a routine supports growth; a ritual supports stasis
for example, building exercise into your daily routine requires forming the habit of that exercise, developing a mastery of that exercise, and doing it continuously to reach some goal as amorphous as improved health or as concrete as running a marathon.
but if you, like me, lack a sense of accomplishment, either because you need immediate reward or you’re just unable to feel pride, improving your health or running a marathon is not going to be sufficient motivation to exercise every day. in fact it may be a deterrent: one of the reasons i’ve always been unable to have a consistent exercise routine is because, as a perfectionist, i feel crushed beneath the pressure of results. at one point in my life, that was literal. i was getting into powerlifting and i was making great progress. then i added too much weight to a barbell and when i went to squat it, i couldn’t get back up. the weight of my self-expectations, the results i was trying to achieve, actually crushed me. and then i stopped lifting completely.
i was controlled for a long time by the restraints of should, the belief that there is a always a right way of doing something, and my obligation is to do everything i should, and do it perfectly. but the root of perfectionism is fear. the perfectionist thinks, maybe if i do everything the right way, i will gain approval, and with approval i will deserve to exist.
a ritual is not the right way but the proven way. the right way is defined by other people; the proven way is defined by you. finding the proven way, your way, requires seeking the pleasures inherent in that thing.
i have always been exceptionally sensitive, and because we as a society prize toughness, my sensitivity has often been confused for weakness (even by myself). but extreme sensitivity has a benefit no one seems to consider: sensory satisfaction. if the texture of, say, velcro makes you sick, then something like velvet or suede may be euphoric. sensory satisfaction is an immediate reward. whenever i struggle with anything, i’ve taught myself to think, “how can i make this feel better?” if you’ve lived your life avoiding pain and overstimulation, if you live in a world of perpetual neglect, it’s difficult to seek out pleasure and easier to settle for distraction. i’m so good at distracting myself from pain that it sometimes takes me hours to register i have a headache, and even longer to do something about it. (i’ve been working almost 8 straight hours on this newsletter [not even writing it! revising it!] and only just noticed i’m starving, dehydrated, and have to pee.)
things like exercising can be a sensory nightmare: there’s the general pain and difficulty of physical activity, the mental boredom of engaging body over mind, and the discomfort of things like sweating. the eventual, abstract reward of health is not enough for the sensitive person to weather these trials. cooking and cleaning have similar problems. the reward of food is sometimes not worth the work of making it. the reward of a clean living space is not worth the effort of cleaning it, especially if you’re not one to mind a little mess. compounded by things like decision fatigue (what should you eat?) and executive dysfunction (what do you clean? where do things go?), it can be astronomically difficult to overcome these obstacles.
i have one sense that is downright dull: taste. aside from mushrooms and spicy food, i will eat anything. but i know a ton of people who are “picky eaters” (i use this term only because it is common, but i dislike its negative connotation), by which i mean they’re sensitive to taste. it’s interesting to have 4 extremely sensitive senses and 1 average one. it gives me a lot of insight into what life is like for people who have no sensitivities. in the same way i can go into any restaurant and pick something i’ll probably like—or take a chance on something new, and even if i don’t like it i’ll be able to eat it anyway—people who don’t have light sensitivity can work under fluorescents, and overhead lighting doesn’t make them want to die. people who don’t have sound sensitivity can tune out lawn mowers and don’t burst into tears when they hear a loud noise. these people have no problems going to the grocery store, which i avoid at all costs. the point is, in not being sensitive to taste, nothing ever tastes bad to me, but that also means nothing tastes great.
i’ve trained myself to consciously acknowledge, and sometimes even write down, whenever something feels good or offers the same blip of happiness that the candle does. it’s taken a long time to do this considering 1) my lifelong battle with anhedonia and self-destructive behavior, and 2) what other people consider to be pleasurable i often find nightmarish. massages: painful, anxiety-inducing, overwhelming. vacations: pointless, expensive, boring. sex: meh.
but things like writing on good paper with a good pen, typing on a thocky keyboard, reading an old book—the tactile sensation these things offer is pleasurable enough to encourage me to do them, even if the work of them (writing, reading) is sometimes hard.
which led me to epiphany #1: i am motivated to do things when it feels good to do them.
seems obvious! but knowledge and application are two different things. if you’re a perfectionist, if your entire identity is wrapped up in doing things the right way but that way is much harder for you than it is for other people, you end up conceding joy to a false ideal. and when you do that for long enough, you may forget that joy exists at all.
the unfortunate truth, however, is that a great many things i struggle to do simply don’t feel good. i will never make a habit of doing the dishes, nor will i find sensory pleasure in the task.
but there is one way to make even the worst aspects of self-care bearable, epiphany #2: doing any task slowly, methodically, and meaningfully—turning it into a ritual—makes that task more pleasurable.
doing the dishes as a chore means doing them to receive the benefit of a clean kitchen. for a lot of people, this is enough motivation to create a habit and fold that into a daily routine. but for me, doing the dishes as a daily ritual means finding meaning in the task itself. it doesn’t have to be deep or important meaning. it may just be “i’ve been sitting in front of a computer all day, and this is a ritual which requires me to step away from my work and engage in a different activity.”
i also invest in what i’ve come to call accessibility tools, which include any product that helps you attain sensory pleasure in your daily rituals. for example: good headphones so you can listen to a podcast or music while you wash the dishes, new towels or dish rags that are prettier/higher quality than the ones you have and which will encourage you to use them and take care of them, a nice scrub brush and a little holder for it. even if you don’t make much money, these small things can make a huge difference in motivation to complete tasks you avoid. just a few days ago i noticed i hadn’t bought new towels in over ten years; as a frugal person i didn’t even consider buying new ones, because the stack i bought at IKEA for a quarter apiece in 2013 still do the job well enough. but towels are inherently sensory—they’re things you touch every day, you look at every day, wash consistently, and own for years. isn’t it worth it to invest in good ones?
all of these revelations were things i knew discretely but hadn’t come together for me until now: meaningful ritual + sensory pleasure = motivation. even though this is a truth some people seem to have been born with, i also know there is probably someone out there like me who is struggling to adapt and make meaningful changes in their life, who doesn’t revel in a sense of achievement after completing a task, and who needs to hear that they are allowed to set aside results-oriented routine for sensory-oriented ritual.
part 3: examples
when i make rituals, i try to break them down into multiple phases. preparation is always its own ritual, because preparation is the most immediate task. often, especially for those with ADHD or other attention-based disorders, if the task is “exercise,” you can get interrupted by the fact that actually there are several things you have to do before you begin exercising. breaking anything into phases can be very helpful, especially if you always allow yourself an out after each phase.
exercise routine—i will exercise every day to improve my health. i will track my progress and eventually reach my goal, at which point i will reassess and create another goal.
exercise ritual, phase 1: getting ready—at 8pm today (only today, not assumed perpetuity), i will begin my exercise ritual by putting on my socks and then my shoes. i will put on my headphones and find music to listen to. i will find something besides my phone to hold in my hands, usually a book or my kindle, even if i don’t end up looking at it, because holding a book (even if i’m not reading it) offers me sensory pleasure.
if at this point i don’t want to enact the next part of the ritual, i don’t, because the preparation ritual is complete and i’ve done it for the sake of doing it. but usually if i have my shoes and headphones on, there’s no reason not to begin the completion phase.
exercise ritual, phase 2: walking—i will walk outside. pat my pocket to make sure i have my housekey. close and lock the door. begin walking. i don’t have a goal or destination, i don’t look at the clock, i don’t track my progress. i hold my book, i listen to music, i walk. there’s a park with a swing on my path and sometimes i stop to read for a few minutes. i circle back home whenever i’m ready to.
at this point the walking ritual is complete and i can begin the winding-down ritual, which i am very motivated to do because of the sensory displeasure of being all sweaty and gross, and the intense sensory pleasure i feel from taking an ice cold shower.
here’s an example for cooking dinner:
dinner routine—i will cook healthy meals for myself every day, and i will eat what i should and when i should and the amount i should. i will save money by buying cheap ingredients and avoiding takeout/delivery. i will eat all the food that i buy and not let my produce get old. eventually cooking will not be so hard.
ritual, phase 1: preparation—at 2pm, i will prepare dinner by cleaning the kitchen, magnetizing a recipe to the fridge, and completing my mise en place tasks: laying out all ingredients, chopping vegetables, getting out all necessary cookware.
mise en place tasks often keep me from cooking for myself. but if i do it early in the day, usually after lunch, the actual cooking in the evening is much easier. again, prepping dinner is a separate ritual from cooking dinner. if i don’t end up continuing to the next ritual, that’s okay.
ritual, phase 2: cooking—at 5:30pm, i will cook the dinner i have prepped and try to clean a little as i go along. i will eat dinner. i will put away any leftovers and ingredients, and clean as much as my day’s energy will allow.
note that the ritual has no indication of what/how much to eat. that is not the work of this ritual. that is the work of the weekly planning ritual that takes place on sunday mornings.
lastly, because you’re here to read about writing, let’s consider a writing ritual:
(my) writing routine—i will discovery/down draft from 10am to 12pm every day during golden hours. obligations notwithstanding, i’ll up draft/revise during silver hours (2-4pm) and dental draft/edit during bronze hours (6-8pm). (it’s rare i do all of these in a day, but that is the overall routine.)
ritual, phase 1: readying your space—at the time i have scheduled for myself, i will tidy my writing area. i will make a cup of tea. i will set aside as many distractions as i can. i will open my document and read what i have recently written.
here’s your out. if you complete this part of the ritual and don’t feel like going to the next phase, don’t. even if you’re not productive, that ritual alone is worth doing for the sake of beautifying your space, drinking a good beverage, and engaging with your own work.
ritual, phase 2: writing—i will draft new sentences and try not to self-edit or nitpick. i will get as many words on the page as i can without any specific goal in mind.
i wouldn’t set a time minimum here, but a time maximum is fair. generating sentences takes an astronomical amount of mental energy, which depletes your physical energy and ability to focus on other tasks later in the day. when i write for a few hours a day, maybe a couple thousand words, i still have the energy to do all my other things. but one day last week i wrote 6500 words and i didn’t even have the energy to microwave a frozen dinner. i slept eleven hours that night. you think, “if i work harder, i’ll get stronger.” but that’s not true. consistent practice over a long time increases skill; more work in less time only chips away at you. you can only ever work so much, and that amount changes throughout your life and shifts with your seasons.
notes and tips on developing rituals
because rituals are the proven way of doing something, not the right way of doing it, they take time to plan and perfect. especially for tasks that other people consider implicit and therefore not ones that need careful planning, taking the time to think through or even write down the ritual like i’ve done above can be helpful. in fact a ritual can begin with writing down the ritual.
it can also be helpful to create a reflection ritual, where you take a little time each day to write down your successes and struggles, which will help you best define the proven way, and also help guide you back if you derail.
i know many people who plan to do something productive and then don’t do it, and they think, “i didn’t do the thing i intended to do, therefore it is my fault and i am lazy.” when you don’t complete a task you intended to do, that’s an opportunity to assess the sensory aspects of that task and improve your ritual. are there any products (within your budget) you could purchase that would make it better/easier/more pleasurable? is there a way to break the task up into preparation/completion? what would it look like to do only 25% of that task over four days instead of 100% in one?
in my experience working with people who have ADHD, nearly everything is made easier by being more social. find a friend who won’t mind if you text them your intended ritual, then update them as you complete each phase. brainstorming your rituals with someone else can also be helpful in the work of creating your proven way of doing things. sometimes you just need to talk it out to make sense of it.
it might be helpful to make a list with two columns: routines to the left and rituals to the right. under “routines” write out the good habits you already have or the tasks of your day/week that have already been established. under “rituals” write out the recurring tasks you struggle to do or which you find tedious/boring. consider the reasons you dislike those tasks and assess how they can be made more bearable.
if you struggle with addiction or self-destructive tendencies, it may be difficult to discern good pleasure from bad. i don’t have any advice here, only commiseration; i struggle with that too and am often suspicious of anything that feels good.
people with OCD or the tendencies thereof sometimes use rituals to self-soothe anxiety, but OCD rituals are different than the notion of ritual i’m writing about here: those rituals are very much tied to the belief that by doing one thing, an unrelated bad thing won’t happen. for example, i used to only get out of bed when the numbers on my clock added up to 17, because i believed if i didn’t, i would have a bad day.
to conclude
rituals can eventually become routine; routines can slide back to being rituals. one of the reasons i wanted to write this is because i’ll inevitably derail and want to come back to this post to remind myself of my own routine vs. ritual ideology, the same way i recently reread my seasonality post and made conscious some beliefs that I’d internalized in the interim. it was nice to go back and look at the breadcrumb trail that led me here.
my rituals probably won’t work for most people, but i wanted to offer what it looks like to reframe the way i think a lot of us have been taught to see motivation and productivity. rituals require a lot of trial and error and self-forgiveness. they also involve a lot of assessment of yourself, your health, and your living situation, which can be hard if you’re struggling. and if you’ve become complacent to neglect and being treated poorly, and hold the belief you don’t deserve pleasure or happiness, healthy rituals and the pursuit of sensory pleasure may seem like candles—a nice thing for people who deserve nice things, and not for you. but i promise you deserve a million daily joys, and a little light you can take with you from room to room.