Episode 137: The Back-to-Routine Drag

Look at your calendar this week, then look at July. Is anything on it actually harder? Probably not — and you are still wiped out by two in the afternoon. There is a real reason for that, and it has nothing to do with how much you are doing.

If the first weeks of fall left you dragging even though your own schedule barely changed, this episode is for you.

In this episode: 

• Why the return to normal life drains you even when nothing on your side of the ledger moved
• The real reason your easy summer habits slipped away on their own — and why it is not a discipline problem
• Why the drag is temporary, and the simple thing that helps it lift faster

Scripture: Psalm 143:8

Research note: Habit research from psychologist Wendy Wood shows our routines are cued by our surroundings, so when the world around us shifts, they stop running on autopilot.

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Transcript

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Welcome to your next best step. I'm Coach Janet J, and this is the show where one doable step does more than a giant leap ever could. It's the first week of September. The season has turned. And if you are more worn out than the week seems to justify, today is going to explain a lot. Look at your calendar this week. Now look at July. Anything on it actually harder? Probably not. And you're still wiped out by two in the afternoon. There is a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with how much you are doing. It has to do with how much of your day used to run without you. Here's the part that confuses women the most about this season. Your own schedule may not have changed at all. Maybe you are retired. Maybe your children launched years ago. Maybe you worked the same hours in September that you worked in July. Nothing on your side of the ledger moved. And yet the first week of the fall routine leaves you flattened, and you can't point to a single reason why. So let me point at a few. The roads filled back up, and the drive that took 11 minutes in August now takes 25. Your church started up the fall programs, and the committee you serve on meets again. The volunteer schedule came back. Your daughter needs you for the grandkids at 7 40 on Tuesdays now, which was not a thing three weeks ago. The doctor's office that had openings all summer is suddenly booking into November. Everyone's calendar refilled, and yours got squeezed into the gaps in between theirs. Even Santino noticed. He spent his whole summer with people wandering in and out of the kitchen all day. And this week the house went silent at eight in the morning, and he stood there looking personally wronged. So the demands did not necessarily grow. The world around you simply tightened all at once in the same week. And here's the thing nobody warned you about. When the world around you changes, your days stop running themselves. There's a line in Psalms that lands differently in a week like this one. David writes in Psalm 143, verse 8, Let the morning bring me word of your unfailing love, for I have put my trust in you. Show me the way I should go, for to you I entrust my life. Show me the way I should go. That is the prayer of somebody who used to know the way and suddenly does not. Which is exactly the position you may be in when the season turns, and the path you walked without thinking about it all summer is no longer there. You are asking for direction through a day you used to navigate on instinct. There's a real science underneath why that feels so heavy. A researcher named Wendy Wood, who studies habits, ran a study back in 2005 with her colleagues, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. And what they found explains this whole season. They followed students who were transferring to a new university and they tracked ordinary habits, exercising, reading the paper, watching television. And here's what they discovered. A habit survived the move only when the setting around it stayed the same. Changed the surroundings, and the habit stopped firing on its own. And a habit works differently than most of us assume. We think it lives on willpower. In fact, it lives in your surroundings. The cue is out in the world around you. The coffee maker, the empty road, the still house, the open afternoon. Those things pull the behavior out of you with no effort on your part. That is what we mean by autopilot. And when the surroundings shift, all of those cues go missing at once. So the behavior falls back under deliberate control, which is Wood's phrase for it. You now have to decide things you had stopped deciding. When to leave, so the traffic doesn't eat you alive, when to eat now that the afternoon has a hole in it, where your keys go in a week that looks nothing like last week. Nothing got harder. A great deal of it simply stopped being automatic. And here's why that wears you out. Wood's later work and a good deal of research since describes autopilot as the efficient setting. A behavior that runs on its own asks almost nothing of your attention. The deliberate version asks for your attention every single time. So when a large share of your day flips from automatic back to deliberate, all in the same week, your attention is engaged far more of the day than it was a month ago. The week weighs the same as it did in July. What changed is how much of it now runs on your attention instead of running on its own. And a day spent steering by hand takes a lot more out of you than a day that mostly steer itself, even when the list on paper looks identical. So breed the drag for what it is. Your day has to be steered by hand for a few weeks while the new patterns settle in. And that load eases as things go back on autopilot, which means you can help them get there faster. Here's how. This one touches on all four pillars. Physically, you are worn down by the sheer number of things being steered by hand. Mentally, the date takes more of your attention than it did a month ago, and attention is finite. Emotionally, the friction shows up as a short fuse over things that would have not moved you in July. And spiritually, the practice that was easy in a loose summer, whether that's your Bible time or your prayer walk, is often the first thing to go missing because the surroundings change. Because it lost its cue along with everything else. So here is your next best step for this week. Find the one thing that keeps snagging, the one moment in your day that used to happen by itself and now takes thought every single time. You already know what it is because it has annoyed you three times since Monday. The water bottle you keep forgetting, the vitamins you have not touched since the schedule changed, the Bible that used to sit open on the summer porch table and now is who knows where. Then give it back a cue. Put it in the path of something you still do without thinking. The vitamins go beside the coffee maker because you will absolutely be at the coffee maker. The water bottle goes on top of your keys because you cannot leave the house without your keys. The Bible goes on the chair you land in every morning. You are handing that behavior back to your surroundings so your surroundings can do the remembering instead of you. That's the whole step. One thing, one new place. Nothing to write down, no system to maintain. Go move one object today. So remember this. Wendy Woods research shows that habits live in your surroundings, and when the surroundings change, the habits stop firing and the day falls back into your hands to steer. That is the back to the routine drag, and it's temporary. Psalm 143 gives you the honest prayer for it, which is to ask for the way when you no longer know it by heart. And your step is to take the one thing they keep snagging and put it where you will trip over it. Give your surroundings their job back. If today's episode was useful to you, would you do one thing for me? A rating or review makes a real difference. It helps other women find the show when they need a little steadiness. And I am personally grateful for each one. I will see you on Friday. Take your next best step.