Importance of routine

Barack Obama on the importance of routine:

You need to remove from your life the day-to-day problems that absorb most people for meaningful parts of their day… You’ll see I wear only grey or blue suits. I’m trying to pare down decisions. I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing. Because I have too many other decisions to make. You need to focus your decision-making energy. You need to routinize yourself. You can’t be going through the day distracted by trivia. (Source: Vanity Fair)

This is great advice on how to ensure that we keep our focus on things that matter and reduce the level of stress in our lives. Much of stress in our lives derives from having to make countless small decisions about things that have minimal importance. These things should at best be routine to reduce inefficient use of time.

But as I have reflected on this quote, I wonder whether there's actually another reason why routine matters. It seems to me that without routines we may not have the foundation to do much more important things. It is not always because the small things are "trivial". Rather it is usually the opposite reason. Life is made up of a series of small repeated actions. If we can get these right in a costless way that may have a huge impact on living fruitful generally.

Two of those important small things is daily prayer and bible reading. If we are to be fruitful there has to be a way in whch prayer and bible reading become routine. They become things that we don't have to make everyday decisions on. They just happen! And that is a very big deal!

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