Jigs and Tiny Routines
I love — and, if I’m honest, also tempted to hate (yes; keep reading) — seeing people’s year-end reflections and new year’s intentions shared on social media or in newsletters. My feeds and inbox are awash right now in people sharing their reflections, intentions, routines, and goals. Here are all the books I read last year! Here’s what I learned about myself in 2024! Here’s my usual morning routine, and here’s what I think is essential! Here are my 25 goals for 2025! It’s great. I’m a glutton for inspiration and get a bolt of soul-sugared energy witnessing people reflecting on and feeling inspired for growth.
But there’s also shadowy, self-deceptive risk for me in it all. Gluttonous for inspiration, I have to watch myself carefully with how I engage with this material. When I stay centered in emotional sobriety, these declarations make me want to cheer from the sidelines with bells and banners. Go get your dreams! When I’m mindless, new year fervor can tempt me to plunge me into debilitating forms of drunken self-deception. I have had to practice truly knowing myself with great care in that tippy middle place.
Years ago, a dear friend and I shared lists of books that we planned to read in the new year. Her list was ambitious but reasonably realistic. She identified books she needed to read for writing projects planned for the year ahead as well as fun and worthy materials too that helped keep her reading varied and vibrant.
My list was long and included some massive, intellectually challenging books. In reality, it was a triple-shot of aspirational idealism, a declaration that I was completely incapable of accomplishing. The list could not and did not serve me. Worse, it mocked and taunted me. As I’ve aged and grown in self-knowledge, I have learned not to make lists like that and also how write a list than can genuinely serve me.
As is true for lists, my various jigs and routines have taken a long time and real practice for me to articulate, evaluate, and revise. These tiny routines of disciplined action are non-revolutionary, and that is precisely their power and glorious good in life.
There’s a part of me that is genuinely repelled by, even rebels against the idea of taking small disciplined action. That same part tempts me to seethe with envy at others when I see them making an an intention explicit, and even more when they actually accomplish it. I have a ton of compassion for but take real care to not indulge that part of me either. In fact, I take the seething quite seriously by making my disciplined actions as small, non-idealistic, and enjoyable as I possibly can. If I don’t find the disciplined action all that enjoyable, then I make sure to at least take real satisfaction in getting it done.
For example, I love writing about as much as I love exercising. I rarely if ever feel like doing either. Yet once I put myself in motion, which my jigs help me to do, whether in going out for a walk or putting a pen to a page, I find that I start to appreciate what happens within me once I get going, or at least take time to enjoy having done so. Cataloguing raw metrics is, for me, a lot less satisfying — nice, 805 words! Cool, 3500 steps! — than just consciously appreciating that I kept a practice fresh and alive for one more day.
As the new year gains speed, I am consciously celebrating the growth that has happened in me since I wrote that reading list long ago. I have evidence of meaningful shifts and changes I have made in the last year that fill me with real pride. I cherish how they help me hold onto sobriety today and point me towards non-idealistic, ordinarily mortal forms of real flourishing. And I’m eager to press gently ahead into new places of creative growth, while accepting my real and actual limits.
Reading now, still reading:
Practical Mysticism, by Evelyn Underhill. This was first published in 1914, and its message remains relevant for today (public domain).
Elisabeth Elliot, by Lucy Austen. I’m (still) reading this work slowly and with great admiration for what Austen has achieved. It’s a work in which one can feel the integrity of her disciplined approach to writing another’s life. If you were raised in an Elisabeth Elliot-attentive community, I urge you to get this book and give it a slow, thoughtful read.
For the Soul of the People, by Victoria Barnett. A deeply sourced and considered book on the role of Protestant churches during the Holocaust. Barnett has a long and worthy corpus, well beyond her significant work on Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which is how I got to know her. This 1992 text is, I think, her magnum opus, and contributes significantly to the history of that time in this text.
Other materials I’ve appreciated recently:
Dr. Sabrina Little, author of The Examined Run: Why Good People Make Better Runners, writes regularly at Psychology Today on virtue and character. I appreciated this article of hers acknowledging how much time — and real doing, not declaring — it takes to become a better person (by which she means practicing a desired virtue habitually, not achieving perfection).
Jen Pollock Michel is offering some Rule of Life intensives in the new year. It might be too late to snag a spot in the ones she is offering today or tomorrow, but keep this workshop in mind for future exploration. Jen’s thoughtful leadership on this subject has benefitted me personally. If you are looking for a sound approach to developing a Rule of Life, I highly recommend hers.
As always, thanks for reading.