Feeling, seeing, listening, deciding
Routines and schedules are largely your friend. I came through a testing week of financial panic and fierce anxiety last week, but emerging out of the worst of it, I saw the vital role of these evolutionary defence mechanisms in motion. It left me weary and wondering just how it got as bad as it did. Nothing really changed between Thursday evening and Friday morning, but as I pottered around the local arts centre, listening to Haruki Murukami, a calm came over me, and with absolute clarity, I knew what I needed to learn from this. Identify how I could turn the hurt into a new foundation, and the calm slowly shapeshifted into excitement and renewed self-belief. Routines and schedules had been lacking forever, and if I truly address that, I have all the tools to blast all the fears that sent me into tailspin out of the sky.
So I got to it, leaned on my wife to help me create some structure and identify my priorities. But when does structure and routine become the enemy? It’s a big question I can’t comprehensively answer here, but as I made breakfast this morning, I smiled and watched the kids on the other side of the room. My daughter sat on the sofa, deep in concentration, on a little keyboard music book, learning some basic nursery rhymes by following the numbers assigned to each music note. My son, a few yards away, talked to himself as he carefully pieced together a ‘venomised’ Doctor Octopus Lego kit. As I turned to check the porridge, I noticed their school reading books. I opened my mouth to summon them to the breakfast table to start our daily read-through, but I stopped. I stopped because I recognised that interrupting this moment would be silly. They were using various kinds of intelligence, independence, and imagination, developing their little brains, building self-confidence and fine motor skills, and of course, boosting aspects of their creativity. They love reading – my life is defined by storytelling and books, and they have followed suit to the point they moan at me to do it – but this free play is critical, not just to kids, but to every one of us if we are to remain attuned to our best self and our creativity. That’s where secondary level education falls flat.
Organisations and individuals who make room for, encourage, and truly value this self-initiated exploration thrive in the age of automation. The ones who recognise the benefits of routines, schedules, and moving forward with focus, but know when to hand over to joy, laughter, curiosity, and play – they’re the ones who don’t just bang the word creativity above the door and strap everyone to a rigid schedule, but build their entire operation on the meaning of the word.
The porridge was good because I kept my eye on it instead of flapping between books and the pan, the kids were vibrant, calm, and full of questions and jokes as we ate it, and as it goes, my wife came down from her shower and with her, they read well enough to front the CBeebies Bedtime Story segment.