So, I get it. You’re looking for ways to stop procrastinating. You wanna be more disciplined with your time. Like maybe you want a morning routine to dive into those creative projects you love.
I’ve tried sticking to my routines for years and years with little success. No lie.
The Play Experiment is a game I’ve created to help me. And I know it can do the same for you.
But before I tell you the rules of the game, we’ve gotta talk about mindset.
Introduction:
1. Why I came up with this method
2. A word about routines and all-or-nothing thinking
1. Why I came up with this method.
Every time I decide I’m gonna stick to a routine I always mess it up.
I plan everything to the last detail but then don’t start. Or I’ll start out strong, but then an unexpected change in my schedule means I skip a few days and then I forget to keep going.
Or I’ll promise myself I’ll do the same thing at the same time every day, only to resist the whole idea with a vengeance.
With every broken promise, the belief that I don’t have the discipline gets stronger.
What the hell is wrong with me? Why is this so hard?
When I finally accepted the possibility that I’m neurodivergent and have ADHD, things got better. A lot better.
I began researching about neurodivergent brains. I started listening to how people described their experiences with ADHD. And I’ve had sooooo many moments of recognizing myself in others.
It’s like the floodgates opened and so many memories from my childhood floated to the surface. Everything began to make sense. Namely, there’s nothing wrong with me.
The only thing wrong is my insistence that I should be able to do things in a way I’m actually not capable of doing. And the fact that somewhere along the way, I’ve convinced myself it’s gotta be hard.
Well, I give up.
I give up working against my limitations.
I give up making things harder than they need to be.
I give up trying to prove myself.
I know from my creative practice that whenever I feel stuck, the answer is to let myself play.
It’s my time to play.
2. A word about routines and all-or-nothing thinking.
We’re used to thinking about routines as always starting at the same time every day. I'm sure you've heard about the routine for authors of waking up every day at 5 in the morning to write. Or others who go to the gym every day at the same time after work.
This kind of routine will never work for my brain. What about you?
In my experience, the time most people have available differs from one day to the next. So I wanna be clear about the goal here:
The goal of this method is to be consistent in taking the breaks required for your desired routine. But it’s not about doing the same thing every day at the same time.
Moving right along, beware of all-or-nothing thinking. Let me give you an example.
Let's say you've been great about eating healthy all week. But then you find yourself having dinner with friends Friday night. Before you know it, you're eating every possible fried thing on the menu. Oh no!
You can let your dinner derail you for the whole weekend, or you can get over yourself for messing up and move on. Hmmm.
Do any of these all-or-nothing thoughts sound familiar?
• If I don't have a whole hour to do my workout, I might as well not bother to exercise.
• If I don't have the whole morning, I might as well not get out my paints.
• If I don't have the perfect tools, I might as well not bother to start.
Here's an example from my life.
For years I’ve convinced myself a 60-minute workout is THE ONLY WAY for me to get back in shape. But because I can't find 60 minutes in my day, I haven't exercised in months. But then one day, I watched a video and did a short little 10-minute yoga routine.
Am I a loser because I only did 10 instead of 60 minutes of yoga?
Well, let's look at the data. I just increased my exercise output by a gazillion percent because I went from nada to 10 minutes. And if I look at how I’m feeling after my piddly 10 minutes of yoga, I feel like a total champ.
That’s because every little bit counts. And why I say the opposite of all-or-nothing thinking is every-little-bit-counts thinking.
So here’s what really keeps us stuck:
What keeps us stuck is the unwillingness to forgive ourselves for not being perfect. Ouch.
Permission to be anything but perfect, granted.
Part 1. Five problems to work with:
Problem 1. Busy feels safe
Problem 2. Easy doesn’t count
Problem 3. Boring won’t stick
Problem 4. Decision fatigue is real
Problem 5. Planning is tricky
Problem 1. Busy feels safe.
Many moons ago, I was a student at the University of Illinois. I had a part-time job that can only be described as part secretarial assistant and part messenger.
My work consisted of asking the secretaries if they needed help with anything. Sometimes, I delivered documents or stuffed envelopes. On any given day, they had a running list of tasks for me.
I reported to one secretary in particular. Her boss paid my part-time salary so I always started and ended my shift in her office. And that was Crazy Amy.
Crazy Amy was good at her job and a good person, but she had a lot of mood swings. If I reported to her on a day when I had nothing pending, she’d usually tell me to check in with the secretaries. But sometimes, she’d come up with a task for me herself.
Let’s just say I learned hella fast that I did NOT want Crazy Amy coming up with my tasks.
One time she had me pick through all the trash for documents with staples. And then my job was to remove the staples. I’ll never know why. It’s not like I ever asked her for explanations.
So I learned to be safe from Crazy Amy’s bad moods, I had to be busy. Or at the very least, pretend to be busy.
I learned that people like seeing you walk back and forth with stacks of papers. They want you to be busy. It makes them feel better. I even learned to spread out my tasks so that they took longer. Uh-huh.
The other secretaries would come to my rescue sometimes. They'd tell Crazy Amy they had an urgent task that would take a while. Then I’d go to their offices and keep them company for an hour. Smile.
It’s a funny story, right? But here’s the thing, this goes way back.
I remember as a kid spending time alone in my room with the door closed. Or going outside and playing in my fort. Because I knew that if it looked like I had nothing to do, I’d get ordered to do a chore. In my house, we always had to clean stuff. So I learned if I was busy doing stuff, I was safe. Hmmm.
Think about your own childhood. Or jobs you’ve had.
Do you take a shorter lunch break to get more done?
Do you keep cramming more things into your schedule?
Do you dismiss taking a 15-minute break?
Question 1. If we’ve learned from a young age that being busy keeps us safe, is it any wonder we have a hard time letting go of being busy?
Problem 2. Easy doesn’t count.
I was a really responsible kid growing up. In my house, good grades were the norm.
I distinctly remember having to study for a science exam. I must have been around 10 years old. I was in my room reading my science book. And I guess I was feeling distracted which was not unusual. So I got out my cassette recorder and recorded myself reading the whole chapter out loud.
I then went into the bathroom to take my bath, cassette player in hand. And I soaked in the tub while listening to myself reading my science book.
When I think about this now, I’m tempted to feel clever about coming up with a workaround for studying that day. But here’s the thing, it would have been A WHOLE LOT EASIER to read the book chapter. I mean, finding a workaround that takes 3 times longer is not exactly ideal.
And I can see how when things come easily to me, I dismiss them. That’s too easy, it can’t possibly work. Let me add a few more steps to make sure.
Think about your own life. If something comes easily to you, do you dismiss it?
How about if something comes easily to others and they get things done faster than you? Do you dismiss their efforts? Do you think they’re lazy?
Question 2. If from an early age, we’ve always had to come up with workarounds to get good results, is it any wonder we value difficulty?
Problem 3. Boring won’t stick.
Any exercise routine that’s ever lasted for me has had a learning curve. For example, I love learning the sequences of yoga movements.
However, if I have to learn too much, then it feels overwhelming. But if there’s nothing new to learn, then it feels boring.
If I’m low on energy, I can do something I already know. The repetition feels calming.
If I feel restless, I can do something fairly new. I’ll be able to focus my energy on learning the sequence and it feels exciting.
As simple as it sounds, it’s taken me YEARS to figure this out. I used to follow the popular advice about doing the same thing every day. And all I ever managed to do was strengthen my resistance. Ha!
Now I know my avoidance kicks in when something feels boring. I know I can actively switch things up to spark my curiosity and feel excited.
Think about your own life. Do you feel more motivated to stick to a routine when you’re learning new things?
Question 3. If our brains avoid doing anything boring, is it any wonder we can’t repeat the same routine every day?
Problem 4. Decision fatigue is real.
If you’ve ever looked at a long to-do list and felt like you can’t focus on any of it, you’re not crazy. This is referred to as task paralysis.
There's too much information at one glance. It’s a sea of words and you can’t prioritize any of it.
What complicates the matter for me is that I’m not good at knowing how long a task will take. I always OVERESTIMATE what I think I can get done. This also has a name. It’s referred to as time blindness.
My only solution is to sit down and write a shorter list, preferably on a tiny piece of paper.
I wanna use a tiny piece of paper because I’m trying to be ruthless. I wanna go from my endless to-do list to my short to-day list. And I do that by choosing the top three things for the day.
Because what I’ve learned the hard way is that writing my to-do list is EXHAUSTING. If I’m not ruthless about how much time I spend on this, it can totally derail me. I won’t have any energy left to actually DO anything I put on my list.
Think about your own list-making habits. Do you spend too much time writing lists? Are you good at prioritizing what to do?
Question 4. If we give ourselves endless to-do lists, is it any wonder we never get enough done?
Problem 5. Planning is tricky.
Let me give you an example of how planning gets me in trouble.
At the start of last year, I promised myself I’d get back to sending cards and letters to family and friends. This is something I used to LOVE doing and don’t do anymore. I got really excited about it. I started gathering the paper, envelopes, and art supplies I wanted to use. So far, so good, right?
Nope. Because what happened next was that I went into batching overdrive. My all-or-nothing thinking kicked in and I created a giant project for myself. Eeeeek. Here’s what that looked like.
I decided I’d create artwork for each letter using stamps and markers. I decided I’d write 30 people. And I decided I wouldn’t go to the post office until they were ALL done.
I could have simply written a few letters a week and mailed them. But nooooo, every step of the process had to be done 30 times.
I only felt like I was making real progress when I had a whole afternoon to work on my letters. And the bigger my pile of unfinished letters got, the more I started avoiding doing it at all. Just looking at that pile made me feel tired.
Did I finish my giant project? Yes, I did. But it was a huge energy drain on me.
Planning is exciting. I can spend days filling notebooks with ideas and plans. And it feels amazing to dream about everything I wanna do. And then comes the inevitable reality check. I can’t seem to finish anything. It takes me forever and I feel horrible about it.
Think about your own way of planning. Does planning get you in trouble? Do you have a balance between planning and action-taking?
Question 5. If our brains enjoy planning more than action-taking, is it any wonder we don’t follow through on our plans?
Part 2. Three mindset shifts to embrace:
1. The Change Paradox
2. The Productivity Paradox
3. The Play Paradox
All righty, I’ve spent a lot of time talking about my problems that interfere with sticking to routines. Do any of these problems ring true for you? Which ones?
So now I want you to notice how all the problems I talked about in Part 1 have an energy component to them. Namely, we’re always stuck in low energy:
• It takes a lot of energy to stay busy.
• It takes a lot of energy to always do things the hard way.
• It takes a lot of energy to maintain routines that feel boring.
• It takes a lot of energy to write endless to-do lists.
• It takes a lot of energy to plan giant projects.
When it comes to keeping your routines, do you still think you have a discipline problem? Because I think discipline has nothing to do with it.
I want you to see the connection between low energy and low joy. When we’re low on energy we get easily distracted, we make poor choices, and we go around in circles. If we stay stuck in low energy, we get anxious and depressed.
This is why using discipline to push ourselves harder won’t work. It only drains us more. We must embrace new ways of thinking to create change.
If I had jumped in at the beginning of this post with these mindset shifts, you’d have totally dismissed them as counterintuitive:
BUT how can I accept myself if I’m actually trying to fix what’s wrong?
BUT how can I possibly take more breaks if I don’t get enough done as it is?
BUT how can I have fun doing this when I need to be more disciplined to get it done?
Yes, I know. The truth is it only makes sense when looking through the lens of what it means to have more energy.
More energy means more joy.
1. The Change Paradox.
We always focus on what we want to improve in ourselves. This means we pay lots of attention to what’s not working in our lives. That’s a massive drain on our energy.
Remember what I said about all-or-nothing thinking:
What keeps us stuck is the unwillingness to forgive ourselves for not being perfect.
Once you stop berating yourself, you get a ton of energy back. And then it’s waaaaay easier to make better choices.
The more you accept yourself, the more you can change.
2. The Productivity Paradox.
If you work without breaks for long stretches, your output declines. This means you need more time to finish tasks. Eeeeeek.
What we want is to get shit done, right? Well, it’s not about the amount of hours you work. It’s about the amount of energy you can bring to your work. If you’ve got more energy, you’ve got more gas in your tank.
Your breaks are the equivalent of mental reset buttons.
The more breaks you take, the more time you have.
3. The Play Paradox.
The essence of play is the experience of engagement and the satisfaction it brings. In other words, when it comes to play, it’s not about what you do, but how what you do makes you feel.
The most important feeling we’re going for is being naturally motivated. Like when we feel inspired to do something.
The more you play and try things, the more progress you make. And seeing your own progress is what fuels your motivation.
The cherry on top is that play helps you decrease stress and recharge your energy. It also helps expand your mind, spread joy, and spark your creativity. Smile.
The more fun you have doing an activity, the more consistent you’ll be.
Conclusion.
After many years of struggling to keep up with routines and failing, I've developed something I like to call The Play Experiment. I’ve noticed how most of the challenges we face with routines stem from feeling stuck in low energy. To change this, we start by embracing three surprising mindset shifts that can truly make a difference.
"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I change."
- Carl Rogers