Chaotic Routine Of Work

why habits and routines need an upgrade

Mandelbrot Set — Image generated by the author

One Dimensional Life

If you ever had a chance to meet atoms, beware; they may outrun you for your accosting habits. But when the atoms accost you, the walkers from all parts of the city watch the spectacle, especially in the era of habits and routines and teens.

If you ever had a chance to meet a biographer with a big B, ask them to make sense of your morning. “So, you woke up because the pupils literally constricted and metaphorically dilated when they saw the sunshine. You ate the food because you invited hunger.” Trust me, there’s no such contact in my phone.

Speaking of phones, Steve Jobs — the first techie to popularize lines and dots — didn’t just influence Jobs but also the famous game — Making Sense Backwards. It has become so popular that the drivers play it, looking at the rearview mirror all the time. The obvious effect: accidents. The unpleasant thing is that there exists no law that accounts for such accidents. On one side, the experts’ retrospection has flooded the internet, while on the other, the young ones note their advice and travel towards vices. But beneath this flood, they fail to acknowledge its chaotic and boring origin from the seabed that even the masters couldn’t see in its darkness.

This new science is known as chaos. Biologically, chaos is healthy. Lungs split into bronchi that have branches that follow a chaotic and unpredictable manner — the manner that allows the existence of different rhythms. Predictability, in other words, is death. It is the complete 180-degree opposite of the trend popularized by Atomic Habits — habits.

Two Dimensional Habits

Is forming habits or a routine possible? These rituals fortunately demand what life lacks: linearity. Here’s how habits are created. Put successful people on one side and get a list of habits. Experts call it reductionism. We replicate them like an astronomical interferometer technique, where telescopes of habit are combined to create a magnified, successful image. Or like the interferometer technique, where two or more waves are superimposed/two or more lives are compared and an interference pattern is found. The universe’s formation wasn’t a five-step process; it was non-linear and messy and gave rise to luminous clusters and groups. “It was unlikely for a pure thought alone; some calculation was needed,” said the man. And that involved knowing that there was no calculation.

Monotony that dawns with morning is often self-imposed. Why? Because we aren’t rich and we only learn from masters. “Work hard; let your grandiosity make noise.” Or, “I was a mango lover. People called me foolish. I believed them. Believe in humanity, young birds.” Their halo effect transforms every spoken word into a truth with capital T. The young birds eventually start hating the mangoes. There can only be one true lover.

Read. This word has made our eyes like those of a cape buffalo. A linear relationship is associated with reading and success. It’s simple: read more and get successful. You may also replace it with other forms: journaling, meditating, playing video games, and following tweets. I’ve never seen this much linearity and zig-zaggedness at the same time, even on the golf course.

Habits — the driest thing invented since Joe Biden’s throat. Golf isn’t a static sport, where the golfer strikes similarly for different positions. Small hits, wind blows, and the angle changes. There are many crucial factors. The same goes with life. Self-help literature and motivational content are mere orders: be open, be strong, and be Shellby. It reduces critical and deeper thinking by providing meaningless frameworks that are so vague, so generalised, and so easy to categorise that people can be deluded into believing ‘this is what life is all about’.

Three Dimensional Days

“Those with the strongest habits who were the least successful in predicting their behaviour over the coming week were the most confident in their pre-dictions. The finding is striking because it hints at one of the dark sides of habits. When we perform an action repeatedly, its familiarity seems to bleed back into judgments about that behavior. We end up feeling we have more control over precisely the behaviours that, in reality, we have the least control over. It’s another example of our thought processes working in the opposite way to our intuitive expectations.” —Jeremy Dean, Making Habits, Breaking Habits (2013)

Randomness like the USA’s president is inevitable. But when we are cognizant of this randomness in our lives, the culture calls it ‘unrestrained.’ Like physicists, mathematicians, biologists, meteorologists, and humans have come to acknowledge the presence of this random element or chaos in daily life. Embracing it won’t bring a virtuous tornado to our city, but peace and agency and focus — the ingredients required to create one. Add serendipity and interests, and we reach our historical roots — versatility.

Versatility is an elytra view formed over a lifetime by exploring dunes at different points in time, curving interests and efforts, abandoning them, coming again, and creating a trodden desert rather than a straight boulevard.

Evolution wasn’t a planning process but an adaptation one. Chimpanzees didn’t become human through a series of habits. Habits may operate in phases, eventually retreating into the subconscious after their adaptation. But there cannot be a habit for everything. Evolution was chaos with feedback. Similarly, randomness birthed the universe. Add direction to it, and you see a complexity like the lives of a polymath and the wives of Henry.

Other times, the bob lovers make their appeal to balance the extremes. But the balance doesn’t cook greatness. In fact, greatness is the residue of obsession. Fun fact: we all struggle with equilibrium. Balance cannot happen in isolation: to have our lives in equilibrium requires others we meet with, to develop a balance in theirs. A small noise is all it takes to set the bob oscillating again between extremes.

Other times, the author for no reason attaches a poem.

Poem

Mandelbrot set dances

Till its death

Its infinitesimal growth

Lasts till its last breath

Can one see its end?

Without overlooking its alive part

They both stand together

A different zoom

And they are apart.