We have finally entered spring, and this week I suggest we do an exercise that it makes sense to do at least once every year, especially for people of intellectual professions:
BREAK OUT OF THE RUT.
Every day, make an effort to change the ways in which you normally do things. These should be small, slight changes that don’t seem, at first, to have any crucial relevance. If you brush your teeth before taking the shower, try showering first for a couple of days. If you have coffee at breakfast and green tea at lunch, try tea at breakfast and coffee at lunch. If you enter the garage backwards, change the direction, just a few times. If you read before bed, watch TV instead. If you always leave the toilet seat down, leave it up a few times.
I, for instance, am writing this post on Monday morning instead of Saturday. And I will be going to my spinning class at an unusual day and time (Monday 10:30). I’m also doing my hair differently for the gym and plan to eat my lunch at the university restaurant tomorrow instead of bringing it to the office.
Of course, the older we get, the more iron-clad are our convictions that the only acceptable routine is the one we have developed for ourselves. The point of the exercise is to get out of this mind-set and to see that we are still flexible enough to deal with a small amount of change. I always mix things up in these seemingly unimportant ways before embarking on a new project, and this always helps to get to a place where I generate new ideas faster and better.
Readers in their 20s will not find this exercise particularly useful (or even very comprehensible) but people past the age of 35, often feel very refreshed after this small experiment. (And curiously, people over 80 don’t find it hard at all. The 50-60 year-olds are the ones who suffer enormously when they try to do the exercise.)
I’m also very interested in what specifically people try to change, so please share. I need ideas for small changes I could make to my own routine.
P.S. Another thing I just thought of: I will be putting the rings I normally wear on my left hand onto my right, and vice versa. If you are a habitual ring-wearer, you know that this will not be extremely comfortable, which is the entire point of the exercise.
Clarissa's Blog 
Well I may be in my twenties, but this proved useful to me this morning! Normally, eating breakfast is the very last thing I do before I leave the house, this morning, I decided to eat breakfast first, after reading this post. I found out that it’s much easier to enjoy your breakfast when you’re not fastidiously avoiding getting crumbs on your clothes or make-up. I can finish up, hop in the shower afterwards, then get dressed and primped and out the door.
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Keeping up with the spirit of the challenge, I almost burned down the house in the process of making lunch. Lesson learned: challenging yourself has to be done with care. 🙂 🙂
A brilliant idea about breakfast, especially for those of us who have poor balance and motor skills.
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