How much habit abiding are you?

Post Reply New Topic

My ritualistic petrification is terrifying. I have not been this way all my life, but now:
I wake up very early (6 am). I go in the kitchen and have some Nescafe and milk with some biscuit.
I open my laptop and plunge in some Free Cell. Then I look at some news (not much) and I try to read or write until 10 or eleven. Then I walk the little dog for an hour or so, do some food shopping and buy the paper newspapers (IHT and a local). I eat my meal at home at twelve putting on the BBC news (or CNN) without sound, listening a CD of rock music (which I don’t like much). I sleep for half an hour after which I go to see some movie (only if there is a good movie).I walk the little dog and I eat at seven pm with the soundless TV and a CD of jazz (which I enjoy much). Then I lye down on the bed trafficking with internet, listening to some more jazz and finally listening to the Goldberg Variations executed by Glenn Gould. At 10.25 I take my sleeping pill and go to sleep around 1 am.
I know all this is not fascinating, as my life is not fascinating. But there are here some immutable points: Rock music at lunch, jazz at supper and the soundless news services. My habit abiding doesn’t stop here, I might subdivide each action in separate rituals but I stop here. I am no Kant anyhow and no desire to have been Kant (which I never read).
Many freecells on the whole they help to feel the holes.

I used to be very bad with routines, but now I am much more flexible (try travelling for a year, it really helps). When I was home from university at my parents, if I was left alone all day I had a routine which was get up, light breakfast, go for an hour walk, play my guitar for an hour, read the paper during lunchtime. Go for another hour walk. Play my flute for half an hour. Decide what to cook for dinner and cook it, then eat it with my family. After dinner listen to the radio for two hours whilst reading and bed at 10pm.

At university my routine was less strict because I had classes and after university when I was working I didnt have fixed days any more, but many fixed things within the week - twice a week swimming (on certain days), learning Italien for half an hour every day, play guitar for half an hour every day (I never got any better at it), Eat exactly what I had planned to eat etc. I know everyone has routines to a certain extent, but mine were rather overwhelming. I never even enjoyed them that much but would feel bad if I didnt do them. I still have regular things I do, but I am much more flexible and dont panic if I find the swimming pool is closed and go half way across town to find another one, but go home and do something else instead.

I'm pretty much a creature of habit.

I had to uninstall freecell on my computer because I would play obsessively. I'd tell myself I couldn't leave the house until I'd played five games. Then it was that I couldn't leave until I had won three games in a row. And then the next think you know, I'd look up and I'd be running two hours late for work!

Alas, I've found other compulsions to take their place.

I go to the same cafe every day, sit in the same seat, order the same thing, arrange the tableware in the same order, then read my paper. New waitresses are somewhat disturbing to me, but since serving food is a normally a fairly transient job, I have to deal with it.

The waitress jokingly calls me Jack Nicholson (I think from the movie about the obsessed writer.) They know me as much nicer and just quirky, though.

I do similar things most days.

One might call my behavior habitual, however these things only became habits because I enjoy doing them (like a "chicken & the egg" thing). I don't do things that I don't enjoy (except when I really have to, such as dishwashing or dentist appts.). So I don't feel enslaved by a "routine"-I have many fears/phobias that limit/narrow my options, but I only do things (day after day) that serve useful purpose for my life.

And I do them in the order I do them because those make functional sense: I wake up, get out of bed, go to bathroom, empty the cat's litter box (better to do when I'm not fully awake), make cup of tea, have a smoke, get online, check weather on tv, etc.

I also sleep different hours each day/night (which is fine with me, shifting hours based on my bodily imperatives feels natural to me)-so that in itself keeps my life from being same every day. I just do mostly the same things in same order throughout my waking hours, no matter what time I wake up or fall asleep.

"Don't you get tired of eating the same thing every day?"

That just strikes me as an incredibly stupid question, and I get asked it frequently. Do these people honestly think that I'd keep getting the same thing if I were tired of it? Do NTs have to eat different things every day to stay happy?

Needless to say, I go to the same place and order the same delicious sandwich every day. I get the same sandwich because it's delicious. If it stopped being delicious, I'd stop getting it. What's the issue?

I wish I could stick to a constructive routine!
Lack of patience, procrastination, impulsivity and awful time management skills mean that my behaviour is pretty much disorganized and random. . .

Ditto

I follow many routines everyday but because of college some days call for different routines than others.

I have had well defined routines in the past. The job I do now involves taking jobs that last from 2 weeks to over a year on occasion. This change in routine would probably drive some aspies nuts. But I have done much crappier work for much less money. For any given job I do develop a standard time to leave for work and there will be a place to get coffee on the way, I like getting wired on caffeine in the morning.

I have a very comfortable routine:

Up at 6 a.m., feed pets, eat breakfast, wash and dress, go to work (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.), read or watch televison, go on the Internet (WP and cat site), read or watch television and go to bed around 8 or 9 p.m.

extremely habit abiding

the older i get, the worse it gets

sleep 10-6. drink 15. liter water. out the door around 7. walk to home depot. bowel movement. walk to grocery store. waste $$ on 1 clif bar (pb, chocolate, white chocolate), 1 lemon luna bar. 1 candy bar (usually kit kat, sometimes hersheys cookies and cream, reeses, crunch). petco. drink 1.5 liter water. walk to bus stop. take bus to school. eat. school. bowel movement. stretch (yoga postures, without the flow).

sometimes 3rd bowel movement.

sometimes library or bookstore.

once a week, counseling.

get back to castle. jail cell. penitentiary. cocooon. crib. dungeon, juvenile hall. pig pen. Pig Pen. petri dish

wash dishes. cook dinner. 5 potstickers. spinach. drink water that the spinach got cooked in.

total at least 5 liter water per day.

eat the same thing every day.

breakfast, 1 serving spinach or 1 apple. 1 serving yam
3 more serving yam, 1 serving candy, 2 clif bar
1 apple, 1 orange, 2 banana
sometimes more fruit
usually only the meat that comes in the dumplings

do not like the taste of meat that much

but, vitamins

live inari sushi. 4 pieces for 7 dollars. ginger, wasabi, lettuce. at whole foods. delicious. inari is deep fried tofu. does not taste laden with sugar, salt, grease or fat. but delicious. sushi rice contains a lot of sugar and vingegar.

epicurean tofu

Epicurean tofu

8 ounces, 4 dollars

ready to eat

pieces of tofu with curry seasoning, 2 servings

2 more servings of cheap merchandise and you have a meal

I am very, very, very much a creature of habit. I am also an inadvertent workaholic, which I think feeds into my habit-forming lifestyle. I get up at 9, go to work, work til 7 at the office, sometimes go for a run, go home, surf the internet, do more work, go to bed around 2. Weekends are more web surfing and working from home. My coworkers often make comments about the number of hours I work (70-80 hours a week), but honestly, if I couldn't work, I would be bored and unsettled. It's part of my routine, and I actually wish weekends didn't exist so I could work at the office those days as well. (I doubt i would feel this way if I disliked the work I did, but if I didn't work, my life would be just as routinized, and I'd just spend more time reading.)

I'm not bothered at all if my routine is disturbed during the day (e.g., I have to go do X when normally I'd do Y). I do hate not being in control of my schedule, though, so I generally hate traveling with my family, although I always go anyway. Within just a few days, I'm worn and just want to be back to my normal routine. I could be in the most amazing exotic place in the world, but guarantee I'd be counting down the days until I got to go home. (If I lived in amazing exotic place full-time or could stay there temporarily and just resume my normal routine, that would be totally fine.) My family's vacations are probably the most stressful time of year for me.

I saw a post I made under a different name and realize I had a pretty limited life back then. Now I have a greater variety of activities, and I like my life much better.

I now take tennis lessons in addition to watching tennis on television. Each activity enhances my enjoyment of the other.