Tag Archives: routine

Is the grass greener on the other side?

I have come to wonder if I am like the proverbial cow that wants to break through the fence and try the grass on the other side of the fence. Is the grass actually greener and tastier or is it all in my mind? Maybe I have the mind like a member of the bovine family. For the past 12 or 13 years, it seems that after about 4 years, I’m ready to move to a new location and I’m not just talking about the next town. It seems that I become disenchanted with the town, the people, the climate, or any number of things. I love to discover new people and places. It takes a while to get the feel of a place. You can’t really do that on a 2-week vacation. Fortunately, I own a business where I can pretty much work anywhere so this makes it pretty easy to do.

Cow trying to eat grass on other side of fence
Photo credit James Rickwood

This time, it’s a vocational edit

I am trying to break out of my vocation or at least add to what I am already doing. You see, when I was young, I had two dreams; to develop a new form of propulsion for space travel and own my own theme park. These may seem like two entirely different pursuits, but each has similar characteristics.
-Research
-Creativity
-Risk-taking
-Innovation
Both of these pursuits require a good amount of imagination, yet neither is for the faint of heart. One requires a significant amount of brainpower including physics, engineering, and math. The other requires lots of money. Actually both require money but opening a theme park, that requires a LOT of money.

Routine is good, just not for me

Are you the type of person that loves to create, yet wants to leave the daily running of things to someone else? That’s me. I love brainstorming, troubleshooting, and coming up with “What if” type of thoughts.
I’ve done a lot of different things in my life. I have been blessed to have many different talents and have put pretty much all of them to use at one time or another. For many, having to come up with new ideas each day gives them a headache. They are very happy to know what is expected of them each day and they do it well. At the end of the day, they feel fulfilled.

Don’t get me wrong, I have routines. For example, I go to the gym regularly, have my morning coffee, pray, meditate, and enjoy a nice beverage in the evening. I also routinely sit down and write down ideas each morning.

I love big projects and I cannot lie

I’ve always been one for big projects. When I was a kid, I built model rockets. You know the ones where you put an engine in them and launch them into the sky. I quickly built many of the store-bought ones but they just weren’t big enough and didn’t go high enough. One day, I had that “what if” moment and said to myself, “If one engine is good, 3 is better.” I then constructed a rocket that was 3 times as high as the store-bought ones, installed 3 rocket engines that would fire simultaneously, and launched it successfully. Getting that out of the way, I went and got two 12′ carpet tubes to build a 24′ rocket. This time, model rocket engines were not powerful enough so I decided to make my own rocket fuel. Let’s just put it this way, it didn’t end well.

The grass isn’t greener, it’s just different

If there is a zany idea out there, I will come up with it. I just need to find other zany minded individuals like me. I’m not sure where one would find these types of individuals. We should start some sort of club. There must be other “cows” out there like me that are stretching their necks trying to find that perfect clump of green grass. In the meantime, I will come up with more ideas and try and figure out how to implement them. So, if you see me leaning out the car window like a dog licking the air, it’s just me looking for that greener clump of grass.

Dog with head out window
Photo credit Shutterstock

The creative mind as a flywheel

What is a flywheel anyway? Per Wikipedia, A flywheel is a mechanical device specifically designed to efficiently store rotational energy (kinetic energy). Flywheels resist changes in rotational speed by their moment of inertia.

image of a large flywheel
Flywheel on Trevithick Locomotive

The large round thing in the image above is an example of a very large flywheel. Basically, they keep the piece of machinery in motion. It’s not very easy to stop all of that momentum once it gets started. That being said, it’s not easy to stop our minds once they get going either. Shifting mental gears is quite a feat. To be creative, I find that it doesn’t come naturally.  My mind is quite content to keep on spinning, keeping my thoughts going on what my routine expects.

Find a different place to think, a new location

Mark Batterson says that a change of pace + a change of place = a change of perspective. To slow down the flywheel of our mind, sometimes a change of place is required. I do my best creative thinking when I am not in familiar surroundings. This change of place, automatically changes the pace of our life, allowing our minds to slow down enough to start the creative process. New sights and sounds stimulate that part of our brain that help get our creative juices flowing. I do my best thinking away from my office.

Take a walk, get your blood flowing

It’s not enough to just go find a new place to think, I find it best to also be doing something while in new surroundings. I have a favorite spot where I go to think. I go to my local zoo in the morning when nobody else is around. I’ve tried to pick a spot to sit and think, but I find that I do my best thinking when I walk around the zoo taking in the sites and sounds.

3 elephants
A zoo is one place out of your routine

The key is to change up the routines of your day. Routine is comfortable, it is safe, it is …..well…..routine.  Get out of your comfort zone. Routine produces routine results. If you are happy with the results, don’t change, but if not, why not shake things up a bit and see what your flywheel, headed in the other direction can produce?

Stop the flywheel and let the creativity begin!