Disrupting your life is often necessary.
At first, your routines and patterns bring order to the chaos of your life. Because they are new, you do them very consciously. And that consciousness of what you are doing makes it awkward, then competent, then skilled, then automatic.
And over time, your automatic routines and patterns, your habits and reflexive responses become limiting.
Or boring.
I’ve been consistently planning each day for well over two years. I haven’t missed a single day for over five hundred days. That’s a habit, and it’s actually a pretty strong habit.
In my mind, it’s the only habit I won’t stop doing.
Every other routine, habit, or pattern in my life is subject to an end date.
I can disrupt every other one. I likely need to disrupt every other one.
Habits and routines are adapted to the environment you are in. They make sense. And part of that environment is your mindset. Over time, habits become so habitual that they are done without thought.
And that’s exactly the problem. Once you start doing a thing thoughtlessly, it’s easy to miss the point at which it no longer is a benefit.
Sometimes, just the fact that you are doing it thoughtlessly means it stops being beneficial.
You need to tweak your habits regularly, to keep them just new enough, just different enough, that they aren’t automatic.
Because when they aren’t automatic, you are able to do them consciously.
You have to do them consciously.
When an activity isn’t completely habitual, you are either exploring new territory (awkwardly), creating paths in that territory (consciously), or perfecting your knowledge of those paths (skillfully).
Once it’s habitual, you aren’t improving, because you aren’t thinking about it.
At this point, small or large changes can make what is habitual move back to something you do awkwardly, consciously, or skillfully.
Doing that keeps you engaged, prevents burnout, and renews you.
So disrupt your life occasionally.