For the last two or so weeks, I've been on strict meal times. More or less. But I hadn't really considered that to be a 'routine' per se, just general outline to shape my mealtimes and decide what to do. This weekend has made me realize that my days are now structured around when to eat, and drink tea. You would think this would terrify me, seeing as I have historically been afraid of being trapped by my own strict rules and expectations. But actually a routine has turned out to make me even more productive because it gives certainty in certain parts of the day. Because if I don't know when I'm gonna eat, or when I'll feel hungry, I'll often be disrupted in something unrelated, start cooking and eating, and then distracted to somewhere else, taking forever to come back to the original plan. But with a routine mealplan, I know when my meals are, so I plan my schedule around them. The meal times also act as dividers between different activities and events, and thus let me clearly 'reset' my mindset but not in a disruptive way.
Structure appears to not hinder productivity as much as it empowers one to be more daring and audacious by making sure some things in life are constant, are consistently there every single day. It gives one the confidence to be out and about for hours with no fear of hunger or other unexpected change in one's mood because it provides certainty around how one will likely be feeling around that time. It's not a chore and it's not hard because if you've internalized it to be a 'substrate' of existence, something that's unmovable and unchangeable, not optional at all, you learn to work with it, and not against it as an act of rebellion.
Honestly, how have I not been doing this all this time?
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