Dealing with Sudden Change
I’m Matt, and welcome to Steady Beats. If you like to walk for a better life, and also like Dire Straits’ “Walk of Life,” you just might like this newsletter.
In the days following the attacks of 9/11, President Bush referred numerous times to the importance of getting back to our routines—a sentiment he also shared in a joint session of congress nine days after the attacks.
What was true then is true now: the best way to deal with sudden disruption in our lives is to lean on our routines. Routines give us a sense of calm, control, well-being, and forward momentum.
Our routines are getting harder to maintain, however.
Tech offers endless choice and distraction. It’s also speeding up the rate of change in the way we work, where we work, who we work with, and what we work on.
That’s a brutal one-two punch to the way we organize live our lives.
Whereas once we relied on organizations to set our routines, we now need to anchor our routines in the things that keep us healthy, that help us deal with stress. Then we must make those routines non-negotiable, even as our lives are a blur of change around us.
That’s not to say organizations still don’t want to control our routines.
The company that runs WebMD embarrassed itself last week with a video informing all employees they must Return To Office, and soon:
(The poor people dancing at the end appear to be doing so at gunpoint. Soviet newscast vibes.)
The backlash against, and the mockery of, the video was swift and substantial. The message was clear: we no longer trust corporations or other large entities to set our routines for us.
Companies can still set routines by force, but they can no longer do so via power. Eventually, they will lose the ability to use force, also.
As work shifs—shorter durations for full-time employees, more project-based contract work, and people living via their own small businesses—companies won’t have the same control over their workers.
Things at work are changing fast, as Paul Millerd says here:
When it comes to routines, you’re up. And you’re on your own.
This is good news. Good for our health, and good for our resiliency. At least, it can be, if we take control.
What are the things you lean when the world gets wild? When work is upended, what are the activities that help you reset and recharge from change and uncertainty?
Set those activities as the center point of your routine. For me, that’s fitness, and faith.
Generation X won’t settle into an easy chair in retirement. We’ll work more years while navigating fast-morphing work roles and business opportunities.
As we age, life whizzes by ever-faster, anyway. Now tech has added a swirl of short-term and continuous change, also.
It’s dizzying.
We can’t control the change around us, but we sure as hell can control the core activities that keep us steady through the chaos.
In fact, we must. So here’s to the anchoring routines that keep us sane, healthy, and forward-facing when it’s hard to tell which way is up.
Thank you for reading.
Let’s keep the Steady Beats going. 💚
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