The Missing Factor: Social Routine

I’m realizing more and more how incredibly important social routine is. More than just being social, I mean having some kind of routine where you will predictably see and interact with others.

I’ve historically always eschewed all forms of routine in my life, including social routine. I’ve always liked the idea that anything could happen at any time and that I was free to take advantage of any opportunities that came up.

But I’m starting to see the value of having a kind of routine. Maybe it’s just that I’m getting older and don’t need or want limitless possibility every single day, but I think that it’s just great to have something to look forward to on a regular basis.

Having a kind of routine makes you feel stable and secure. You know what’s coming. You experienced it recently, and it was great, and now you will be experiencing it again. So you get excited.

I’m sure I’ve belittled the nature of most people to seek comfort, safety, and stability above all else, but there is certainly value in these things.

And like with all things, I think the key is balance.

With a strong foundation below you, you are more stable and that can open you up to more options. So in a sense, perhaps having the right balance of these things actually opens you up to maximum opportunity.

I don’t need or want to have recurring plans for every day of the week. But having a couple throughout the week can be great!

When I’m home, I constantly look forward to the next time we go out and play disc golf. While it isn’t strictly on the same days of the week, it is fairly regularly and tends to fall on similar days, and offers enough rigidity to keep me excited and motivated.

I also generally see most of my friends regularly enough that it feels like routine.

And of course in the fall, we have our kickball league, which offers the truest and most rigid routine I have at any point, and it’s quite enjoyable.

Here in Spain, I’ve failed to secure any kind of social routine whatsoever, and I think that has cost me.

I recently had the idea to look up casual volleyball leagues. Right at the very end of my 3-month stay.

The idea of having something on the calendar and playing volleyball once or twice per week is excellent. I would have loved to have done that. Plus I would have met people quickly and probably been invited to do other activities as well.

Alas, I did not do that. I didn’t join anything or make myself part of any kind of group.

Those things would have been great.

I’m thinking now that I should join some kind of group, club, or activity immediately when I travel to a new place. I think that kind of social routine is exactly what I would need to feel at-home and quickly amplify my social circle.

It’s too late for this trip, but I’m looking forward to trying it out the next time.

I’ve Internalized such a Radical Sense of Personal Responsibility that I See Everything as My Fault

I’ve always been attracted to schools of thought that say you should consider everything in your control and take responsibility for everything around you because, in the end, you can only truly control yourself. So if you want different results, you need to change yourself.

And it’s an enticing message and also seems totally reasonable.

I do want to note that I think “personal responsibility” as a personal strategy can be helpful (to the extent I’m going to outline), but “personal responsibility” as public policy is disastrous at best and deeply malicious at worst. I think it’s basically just used to justify the status quo, blame the less fortunate for their problems, and codify a tiered society while freeing the ruling class from any semblance of guilt (or – ironically – responsibility).

With that out of the way, I want to highlight the primary ways in which using “personal responsibility” as a personal strategy is limited or can be actively harmful:

  1. Many things are completely out of your control and if you believe otherwise you will waste your time
  2. You’ll worry about the outcome of everything around you, feeling that those outcomes are a reflection of your own efforts and abilities
  3. You’ll blame yourself and feel a tremendous sense of guilt every time something goes wrong
  4. You might feel inadequate with your abilities or accomplishments because you are downplaying or outright denying the importance of external advantages others might have had (wealthy parents, connections, etc.)

This is honestly something I never really considered before today. While I knew there were potential pitfalls to blindly believing in “personal responsibility,” I guess I never really considered how such an ideology was hurting me.

And now I have, and I’m realizing that it’s been harmful in quite a few ways.

I think it has made me a lot more anxious. Historically I’ve always considered myself an easy-going, go-with-the-flow type of person, but I’ve felt my anxiety creeping up over the years and I think this is partly to blame.

I feel responsible for everything bad that happens around me. I always think of things I should have done to prevent it, and I treat the possibility of future bad things like a puzzle to be solved. If I just work hard enough or do things perfectly, I can avoid it.

Some of the happiest people I know are the types to not take responsibility for much of anything. They see most problems as someone else’s fault, and so aren’t bothered by them.

And that’s probably what is the most harmful to me: it’s the feeling that these bad things happen because of my own inadequacies. It’s my fault they happened, and I should have been better.

Since obviously it’s impossible to prevent bad things from happening, and many of these things are completely out of your control, this leads to a rather pointless and constant barrage against your self-esteem.

And if our only goal was productivity, you could make the case that with a crippled self-esteem, you’re going to be way less capable and get much less done in the end, defeating the purpose of “personal responsibility”.

Productivity is, of course, not our only goal. And so the damage to self-esteem matters far more than just how it affects productivity.

I think that this mindset has also hurt me in that it’s hard for me to let go of things. For every failed project, relationship, goal, or performance, I can’t help but analyze what I did wrong and ultimately blame myself.

Which: of course! That’s the whole idea.

But you can’t spend all your time thinking about your failures. In reality, they may not even be your failures. Sometimes things just happen. Some things weren’t meant to be.

While looking at everything like it’s your fault may provide useful insight so you can improve in the future, it also might not.

And more importantly: it may severely cripple your own self-image to the point where you no longer see yourself as talented or capable at all. And besides making you unhappy, it may also ruin your future chances at success.

I can’t help but still keep thinking this way, but I think it’s important to seek balance. I need to learn when to dig for insight in failures, and when to simply accept them and move on. Some failures have no lessons.

I’ve spoken before about how I think we need to be careful about the lessons we learn from our failures, but I’m just now starting to realize that one of the reasons I prefer to learn lessons from successes is because it’s just a lot better for your self-esteem. And if we want to approach things from a pragmatic perspective, we need to also consider these things because they affect future performance, too.

I’m not saying that focusing on “personal responsibility” doesn’t have benefits. What I’m saying is that it absolutely has limits. It doesn’t apply to every situation.

If, in a given situation, it’s a useful paradigm: use it! But if it doesn’t serve you then you shouldn’t.

It’s Very Important for me to Feel Progression in My Life

This almost feels like maybe I’ve already written this same blog post before, but hopefully I didn’t.

I had the thought recently that I need to always feel like I’m progressing in something. I don’t necessarily need to be progressing in everything, but at in at least 1 or 2 areas, I do.

Self-improvement is important to me, and if you look at how I spend my time, most of my activities involve some kind of improvement. Whether it’s studying a language, going to the gym, or learning/practicing other things, I’m always trying to improve.

When I spend a lot of time on something and I don’t feel like I’m progressing, I get frustrated. It has happened time and time again with weight training, it has happened with language-learning, and it also happened – notably – last year with disc golf.

I’m not sure exactly why it is so important to me. I also don’t know whether it’s what I should truly be focusing on. Maybe I’m focusing a bit too much on the outputs rather than the inputs. If I put time in and focus on ways that will actually make me better, the outputs will come.

If I focus too much on just the results, I may get frustrated and sacrifice the quality of my training. I may even avoid the thing altogether, which obviously won’t yield results.

I don’t think it is bad to focus on progression and I’m sure I’ll always do that. But I do think it’s important to take a step back and focus more long-term on things, and also consider the context of everything. If I’m struggling overall with mental health or external factors, it will affect my progression elsewhere.

I shouldn’t get frustrated with myself for not progressing in one area when I have serious problems elsewhere.

Regardless, I think that it is simply important to acknowledge that it is, in fact, important to me to always be progressing, and make sure I’m focusing my time and energy effectively to ensure that I can do that.