The ‘legislative rider’ is when a lawmaker adds extra provisions to a popular but essentially finalized bill. The idea is that although the provisions might fail to pass if presented as their own concept, the opposition will not reject the more popular bill on the grounds of these extra provisions being included. It’s a cute concept, I suppose, and speaks to the reality of an otherwise well-intended political process (1)
In terms of routine, I accomplish more by applying this concept because I’ve learned that my least time consuming tasks are often the ones I’m most likely to skip. For example, I used to stretch each morning after waking up but I found that this ten-minute routine was difficult to squeeze into a crowded morning ritual whenever I was in a hurry to get out of the apartment. I eventually rearranged my schedule to include stretching in my pre-bedtime routine. This was a great fit because I never arrive home in such a rush to get to bed – I already take a few minutes to unpack my bag, brush my teeth, and take out my contacts.
I highly recommend adding small but important rituals to more consistent larger routines as a way to ensure these less stable tasks don’t get skipped under unusual or stressful circumstances. Many good candidates for the ‘rider’ concept are so obvious that most of us do them without thinking – I bet the way I shave after showering is a very common example among many routines. Self-reflection is a great way to identify more of these opportunities. A specific technique I use is to ask myself what small tasks I find difficult to initiate or aggravating to complete in order to determine which tasks I should reassign as bookends to a more stable routine.
One good example is how I save a couple minutes on laundry day by the way I pull socks from my drawer (2). It works because I have two sets of dark socks that I consider identical – it doesn’t matter which type I wear on any given day. However, they feel different enough on my feet that I do not want to mix them together. My original approach was to separate these on laundry day but I always considered this a waste of time. I realized that I could save myself the effort on laundry day by simply leaving the socks unorganized and grabbing three at a time whenever I was getting dressed. The math is simple – by grabbing three socks, I’m guaranteed at least one matching pair, and the one extra second it takes me to tell the difference by feel is a much better use of my time than the couple minutes I once wasted on laundry day organizing the socks into pointless piles.
Footnotes / shameless self promotion
1. And there’s always Wikipedia, as well…
I went into the archives and found this post where I mentioned the rider concept - like a dumbass, I called them 'flyers'.
2. No Wikipedia for this one, though…
And here’s a post where I mentioned this trick.
