The answer presented itself earlier this week when I wrote that my apartment resembled 'a tipped over Goodwill truck'. I paused and wondered - why not just stop writing and clean up? I always notice when people spend more time talking about doing something than it would take to just do it - oh, this email is going to take so long to write, said the Business Bro while not writing the email. And if I want to be loyal to my analogy, well, if a Goodwill truck did tip over, the cleanup crews would be on the scene right away.
Apartment cleaning is a little different. As Clausius noted (or was it Mused?) in an isolated system, the entropy can only increase. When you live alone, an apartment is always on the precipice of becoming an isolated system - the lockdown and its accompanying social distancing mean my studio has gone live. To really dumb down thermodynamics (and that's assuming I've put in the work to know what I'm talking about, which of course I don't, because I don't have the energy) an apartment can only be clean in one way, it's clean or it isn't, while over time the number of ways it can be unclean will only increase. If you must explain this to your grandmother, just say that as soon as you clean an apartment, it starts becoming messy again.
I've always dealt with this reality
The lockdown has emphasized the importance of protecting my dwindling energy from wasteful deliberation. As I alluded to earlier, routines have a certain power and success is often a consequence of leveraging the most productive routine. At its best, a routine prevents energy from being wasted. The big question of April was how to revise my routine to get the best of my energy during lockdown. And like I've done with my apartment cleaning, I've found an extension of the charter school concept in the way I've reconsidered routines. For most portions of my routine, it's been business as usual, but in certain select areas - anything I will continue when we return to normal life - I am very focused on establishing new, healthy habits. For example, on Sundays I've forced myself to turn the oven on as soon as I wake up. This isn't an idiotic heating trick, I do it because I've determined that starting to cook right away is far more productive than waiting for late morning. The change has come at the cost of my morning walk, but I don't really need it on Sunday mornings, and I'm happy to fall out of the walking habit because I know in the relatively near future my corona-induced strolling will be a thing of the past.
Thinking about these long days as laboratories for tiny improvements in my future 'normal' routine sometimes feels like wasted effort because I'm not making the most of the moment. But I believe finding the best use of the next minute, hour, or even day is not always the best use of time. A daily routine is, like any complex system, a string of compromises, and the best we can do is look for ways to keep our energy from turning against itself, and becoming wasted. I know some will dispute this, suggesting that every minute can be a productive sixty seconds if we so choose, but I'm not alone in believing that a system based on endless growth is unsustainable. The singular power of the routine is the way it guides energy, not necessarily into productive channels, but consistently away from its destructive uses, and always toward a sustainable process. In a pandemic where so many disrupted routines have led to the gnawing sense of wasted energy, I've found value in looking for things I can start now and continue later, and I'm looking forward to a brighter future powered by a better use of my time.
