Why Routines Are Important: They Defend Against Chaos & Whim

In this age of endless distraction, the best offense is a great defense.

If you don’t have a daily schedule in place that carves out time for your most important work, an endless dribble of emails and interruptions and “little requests” can easily suck up all of your time. In her book The Writing Life, Annie Dillard speaks about the importance of a schedule for living a fuller life:

“What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time. A schedule is a mock-up of reason and order—willed, faked, and so brought into being; it is a peace and a haven set into the wreck of time; it is a lifeboat on which you find yourself, decades later, still living. Each day is the same, so you remember the series afterward as a blurred and powerful pattern.”