The-way-we’ve-always-done-it syndrome

Routine is a two-sided coin.

When actions become routine, it means you no longer have to think about doing them. They’re effortless.

This virtue of effortlessness is also a downside in its own right because it creates the risk of you defaulting to routines not because they make sense or serve your goals in any meaningful way, but because that’s the way you’ve always done it.

Do you really need to have that weekly meeting still?

Is that partnership still creating mutual value?

Is Netflix really how you still want to spend your time on the weekends?

One of the most effective thieves of time, productivity, meaning, and long-term happiness is complacency with routine — with familiar action in familiar places.

To that end, it’s worth trying to adopt a kind of meta-routine as a individual, as a team, as an organization — one that involves asking at the end of each day, or each week, or each month: do these activities still make sense?

Even when you realize that some things no longer serve you, it can still feel a bit like an inconvenient truth because change is hard.

But ask yourself this: where will you, your team, and your organization be if you don’t change?