lifestyle design
why i'm building a lifestyle around the principles of flow, depth, and spontaneity
Everyone’s always told me how important it is to have a routine. For whatever reason, it’s always been insanely hard for me. Never was this more apparent than during college. I tried valiantly to be a good student and remain aligned to my academic and professional goals every day, but by the time I had graduated, I was known more as ‘the kid who skipped all his classes’ or ‘the kid who always stayed up till 4 AM playing FIFA’ than anything else. It wasn't the best look, but I couldn’t help it! Every time something popped up on my Google Calendar, I was overcome with a sense of resistance and hatred. The audacity of something to make an imposition on my time! Ridiculous.
I thought it might be different after college. I really tried my best at setting and adhering to some routines. I built a pretty little habit tracking dashboard, I time-boxed all my days, and I ensured each action was quantifiable and had key metrics attached to them to enable me to gauge my progress and remain accountable. I pulled out all the tricks from the hat.
But even this was a disaster! I spent more time building the habit tracker and writing out the key metrics than I did actually trying to adhere to the plan I had built. Every time I tried to take action on the plan I just felt suffocated and inadequate. It was awful.
Eventually I abandoned all attempts at setting some kind of structure to my day, coming to terms with the idea that I won’t ever achieve machine-like efficiency; that I’d always be lagging behind the productivity gurus of our time. Instead, I just focused on doing things that made me feel good, putting the ideas of success and productivity on the back burner.
All of a sudden, things just clicked, and I’ve felt myself start to soar these past few months. Somehow, this has happened at a time that my lifestyle has resembled the farthest thing from the routine and habit-based lifestyle that is pretty much universally accepted as essential to achieving any kind of success. But regardless, I feel a tremendous sense of alignment right now.
It’s taken me a while to be able to articulate why my current lifestyle just works for me, but I think I finally understand why. It stems from the realization that a routine-based lifestyle isn’t the only pathway to flourishing. It is one way, but not the only way; that’s simply a myth that I had subconsciously bought into. Instead, there’s many ways, and it’s up to us to embark on the process of lifestyle design and figure out what way brings us the greatest feeling of alignment.
For me, a routine was clearly the wrong design choice for two reasons:
It feels lifeless - the thought of mechanically doing the same things day in and day out feels robotic and repulsive. I’m not a software program that’s trying to figure out the optimal pathway to execute tasks deemed important. I’m someone who loves to dream and wonder, and trying to schedule some time to do that in some calendar app sounds moronic and comical and defeats the whole purpose.
It foregoes intentionality - a routine-based lifestyle stems from the point of view that we progress when we’re able to mindlessly able to do ‘good’ and ‘productive’ activities. I disagree with this; I think everything we do should be imbued with intention and purpose. I want some element of choice and agency to be present throughout my life, and hacking my way to building productive routines seems like it’s designed to minimize choice and agency. Not my vibe.
I've chosen to design my current lifestyle around the following three principles: flow, depth, and spontaneity. I’ll spend the rest of this post explaining what each of these principles mean to me. They’re inter-related, so the discussion of each will sort of blend into each other, but hopefully you’ll still finish with an understanding of why building a lifestyle around these principles has injected me with a renewed sense of vitality.
flow
I used to have this mental vision that for me to do something I not only had to be able to dedicate significant time to it, but consistent time. That if I didn’t have the ability or time to dedicate 30 minutes - 1 hour per day to do something, it wasn’t worth thinking about. That if I wasn’t ready to adopt the activity as part of my identity or core set of hobbies, it wasn’t worth doing.
Now I’ve started to think more in terms of seasonality and temporality. Just like the earth cycles through different seasons, I cycle through phases where different activities and actions just fit. For example, in the winter, I couldn’t stop reading, but right now, I’m struggling so hard to get into a book. In the past, I would’ve filed this as another item in a long list of personal failures. Not anymore. Now I understand that this just isn’t the season for reading books; my energy is best directed into other pursuits.
And it makes complete sense! I’m currently just filled with a ridiculous amount of expressive and creative energy. I’m way too restless to be able to sit and read for hours. This is the season for writing, for exploring new forms of movement like yoga, for deepening my relationship with music, for elevating my golf game, for doing crosswords and other puzzles, and for spending time with my brother and grandmother who I scarcely see for a couple months in the year. Embracing flow means embracing these pursuits fully without trying to hold on to the pursuits I had in the past; in seasons gone by.
So it’s not so much about figuring out how to manufacture time to dedicate to certain activities that I’ve predetermined to be important. It’s about following my body’s natural rhythms and letting my intuition shine. I have no idea what the next season will bring for me or when it will come, but I’m content enjoying this one and flowing into the next one when it is time.
It’s like tending to a garden. The seeds that are planted are objects of my curiosity. Not all of them will sprout together at the same time; there’s a broader natural intelligence that will govern when each seed will sprout, when each flower will bloom. It’s simply my job to continue planting seeds and fully immerse myself in their beauty when it’s their time. To let nature flow.
depth
I used to buy into the practice of using habit trackers or something of the sort to stay accountable to repeatedly doing things that I thought were good. I really exerted a lot of effort to trying to ensure that I journaled, read, meditated, played some violin, networked, etc. on a daily basis. But all that did was add stress into my life; instead of being fully engaged in whatever activity I was doing, I was simply trying to complete it so I could move onto the next thing. So I could continue checking off items on my little habit tracker. I didn’t feel good at all while doing any of these things, and I predictably burned out really quickly.
There are two specific reasons why I think cramming a bunch of activities within a single day doesn’t work for me:
It promotes superficiality over engagement - I think the rewards or the fulfillment derived from an activity are exponential based on the time you invest into it at once. For example, if you spend like an hour reading a book, the last 10 minutes are usually a lot more immersive and engaging than the first 10 minutes. It takes time to ease yourself into an activity, and quickly pivoting from task to task ensures you never reach a point of full immersion and engagement.
Growth comes in phases, and phase elevation comes with depth - I’ve come to believe that growth in any domain is never linear; it comes in phases. I think we spend the vast majority of our time on plateaus interspersed with brief moments of rapid growth. And those moments of rapid growth only come with depth. This is why I believe trauma can be such a powerful catalyst for personal growth: it requires you to dive deep into your grief and pain in order to transcend it. In that vein of thought, it doesn’t make any sense to spend your days bouncing between task to task, because even if you see incremental improvement, you’ll still remain on the same plateau.
I’ve been exploring ways to manufacture depth throughout my life. Right now, I really enjoy starting and ending my days with short yoga and meditation practices to connect with my body and find some peace and stillness, but I’m curious if I’ll find more enjoyment in doing a longer yoga session in the morning and a longer meditation session in the evening instead of trying to do both in the morning and evening.
Even my relationship with meditation has changed. At the start of this year, it was an incredible catalyst for growth and self awareness, but while I really enjoy the time I spend meditating, I’ve definitely plateaued; I no longer feel like I’m growing through this practice. I think the next wave of growth will occur when I either commit to longer meditation sessions or go on like a week-long meditation retreat. Only then will I take the next step in truly transcending my fears and freeing myself.
Either way, pursuing depth has been really powerful and a lot of fun. I don’t journal very often, but when I journal I find myself spending almost two hours to truly declutter my mind. I don’t golf year-round, but when the weather is good enough to play, I go 5-6 times a week. And I haven’t played violin in a couple of years, but I’m so excited to have finally found a mini-project that’s reignited my passion and love for the instrument that I’m ready to spend hours this upcoming week to put it together.
spontaneity
Another common practice that is encouraged is setting a clear plan for how your day should go; for time-boxing various activities to ensure you’re optimizing your time. I hate this practice:
It kills your agency - when I’ve planned and time-boxed my days, it feels like I’ve given myself a prescription. In the same way that doctors prescribe medication to help you tackle your health issues, a time-boxed schedule is a prescription of activities that in theory will help you tackle the lack of success you feel in your life. And the thing that taking medication and following a time-boxed schedule have in common is that they’re exhausting and anxiety-inducing and leave no room for individual choice. Obviously taking medication isn’t a bad thing, but there’s no reason to structure your entire approach to life that way. And if planning ahead of time is based on the fear that you won’t do the things that in theory are good for you if the choice was up to you, then there are probably some deeper issues you need to tackle that a time-boxed schedule won’t fix.
It leaves no room for rest, recovery, and play - sure there’s nothing ‘productive’ about going on a walk. There’s nothing ‘productive’ about sitting and staring at the ceiling. There’s nothing ‘productive’ about aimlessly strolling around the house and bothering your family. But these are often my favorite times of the day, when I finally have some space to breathe and be still and just allow myself to be; it helps me absorb and process my experiences. It’s also pretty interesting that I feel the most creative during these times. You can’t script or schedule creativity sessions; it just happens when we give ourselves some space. That’s why ‘shower thoughts’ are a thing - it has nothing to do with the shower, and everything to do with the fact that that’s often the only time during most people’s days that they’re not either mechanically completing tasks or being overwhelmed by sensory input from devices.
Now rest and recovery are very different from activities like playing video games, doom scrolling, etc. Those are my vices; I don’t feel rested at all after doing them. I feel dead inside. Usually after playing FIFA I’m ready to hurl my controller at the TV. My brain is completely overstimulated and overloaded with anger and frustration, and it takes me a long time to calm down and relax afterwards. The only creativity that happens during this time is thinking of creative insults I would hurl at my opponent if they were sitting right in front of me.
Regardless, I’ve fully embraced spontaneity and leaving the day as a blank slate. I only have pretty loose morning and night routines, and even those aren’t scripted or planned. When I wake up and brush, it’s a choice that leaves me feeling great for taking the time to care for my teeth and gums. When I apply toner and moisturizer, it’s a choice that leaves me feeling great for taking the time to care for my skin. When I do some morning yoga, it’s a choice that leaves me feeling great for taking the time to care for my poor and neglected hip flexors and back. When I sit finally sit down to start working, it’s a choice that leaves me feeling great for not neglecting my responsibilities and having the chance to do interesting work.
It’s such a powerful feeling having so much agency and intention throughout the day. And all of that would be taken away if I planned everything to death.
I think there’s two overarching ideas that have stuck with me through the process of designing a lifestyle.
The first has to do with the idea of ‘financial freedom’ and material success. Typically the thinking goes that we have to grind and do things that we don’t necessarily want to in order to accumulate enough wealth so that we have the means to invest time into the things we love. This doesn’t make any sense to me because unless your idea of finding meaning or doing the things you love has to do with drinking Voss water on a remote tropical island with a private jet on the ready to take you to your next ‘dream locale’ (in which case you’ll probably spend your last days drinking alone like most celebrities), finding meaning and love has nothing to do with financial freedom or material success. The parable about the Mexican Fisherman and the Investment Banker illustrates this perfectly for me. Sacrificing doing the things you love (or giving yourself space to find the things you love) for the pursuit of material ends is short-sighted.
The second has to do with control. The idea of building a routine in which we exert our force of will on time and the world around us is a classic example of human hubris. It stems from the idea that we know better than to follow the natural rhythms of our body; that our time and our actions must remain under our control. I’m much more in the school of thought that views ourselves as a vessel through which the natural intelligence, intuition, and capacity to love that we were born with will organically shine through if we let it. And it will always guide us to where we need to go. Any attempt at exerting control will only silence our innate gifts.
Perhaps a lifestyle centered around flow, depth, and spontaneity won’t make me a billionaire really fast. Or get famous really fast. Or build a personal brand really fast. Or get thousands of followers on social media really fast. Or get invited to speak on a hundred different podcasts really fast. Or attain any ‘conventional’ measures of success really fast. But I am taking steps forward, and I’m starting to realize that none of those things are really that important to me anyways.
One of my favorite sayings is that Rome wasn’t built in a day. This year I’ve already done more than I ever imagined I could, but I know I’m just scratching the surface. My greatest work is yet to come, and I know I’m moving towards it. The first step was constructing a lifestyle that has given me the space to rediscover love and curiosity. I’ll continue iterating in this process of lifestyle design, but I love where I’m at.
Now it’s time to build.