In a Philosophize This! podcast on Kant I learned that he was extremely consistent in his routines. Every day he would walk at the same time, eat at the same time, etc. Not exactly the same as rituals, but it finally got me to consider that perhaps consistent routines every day would help me essentially slip into other creative, productive habits via auto-pilot.
If you approach life as a physical system, regular rhythm is the most efficient way to save energy and avoid wearing. Predictable flow is probably very nice on your mind, body and ultimately everything else. And it seems biology tuned us to a lot of external rhythms too. Sun, seasons. I think using every period the best : day to move and work, night to sleep. It seems stupid but I think you end up leveraging a lot of builtins subsystems in you.
As a counterpoint, biological systems grow stronger when stressed then allowed to recover.
Routines are great when interspersed with periods of non-breaking stress. Growth is dependent on stress.
I refer to a more general term of stress, not necessarily psychological. Although the latter can make you a stronger/more empathetic person; the danger is in not being able to let go of them for the restoration/growth period.
We all know that we need stress/efforts to stay in shape (the weak bones of astronauts being a nice example). And it's indeed baked in us.
And by rhythm I didn't mean stress free. I meant having clear periods of a certain kind of stress (or the opposite). Basically, stress your system with all the subsystems ready for it, then allow them to rest in an appropriate context.
As a young adult (remains of teen spirit I guess) I prefered to attack everything at once in parallel. But when things get too complex I realized the value of going depth rather than breadth first. It's related, you do one thing fully, then stop entirely, instead of constantly feeding small amount of stress and never large enough amount of rest.
Agreed, what you say reflects my own growth as I've gotten older. I'm hesitant to call it wisdom, but it's served me better than the outlook from my youth.
I vaguely remember my high school philosophy teacher telling us that Kant had lived freely in his early years, he drank a lot, partied all the time. But after reaching a certain age, he arrived at the conclusion that he had a duty in the society, so he organized his life rigidly. He told his servant to wake him up very early every day at the same hour. He worked and ceased partying. He carefully planned all parts of his life, for example for enjoyment he invited friends to his house for dinner.
I think taking Kant as an example could be flawed here. He didn't organize his life in routines to benefit himself, to make him more productive/happy etc., he organized his life to fulfill his duty and I personally don't think that he was happy in doing that.
