“Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” -Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein started out working in a patent office [1] but clearly didn’t end up known as the best patent clerk in the world (although I can argue he was the most notorious). He changed his routine. He changed his world.
Which brings me to a larger point – everything doesn’t last forever and will ultimately change.
If you’re working at your job and have been for years in the same 9-5 Monday to Friday path look at it on two levels: macro and micro. On the macro level – you haven’t always worked at your job. You were in school. You had hopes and dreams beyond working in an office for a large company. On the micro level – you have new interactions everyday, with a coworker, a business associate, the coffee shop guy, the internet. Nothing you do will EVER give you the same results.
Why did something happen? How did you get to where you are? You ultimately decided to allow it to happen. You may have not forced the circumstances that led up to the decisive moment but you did let it into your life.
On the micro level Albert Einstein is wrong. You can never have the same results. There are too many factors in that moment to make it exactly the same. On the macro level he’s right. If you keep on doing what you’ve been doing the way you’ve always been doing it don’t expect a different outcome.
Change your view. Change the way you approach things. Do you walk the same way every day? Change your routine. Find a new way to get to done. In the very least it’ll make life more interesting. At most it could change your whole life.
*Side note – I’m changing my own routine. All branding and social media articles will be over at http://damienbasile.posterous.com. More general posts about how to ‘get to done’ will be over here from now on. I’ve done this to create clarity and save me time writing so I can use my time more efficiently elsewhere.
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What I love about my little white Macbook is that I can change my routine work position so easily, where I sit to work, inside the house, outside the house (hmm! not so easy in England), in different areas of the room. Giving me a different view. Today I can see the garden, not the wall. It’s a different perspective. That’s my first step to changing my routine. Routines get locked into our bodies. The foot we always use step onto the stairs or off the pavement, the movements we make to make our dinner or the way we put on our socks. I like the mindfulness involve in changing a routine.