Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome back to the Midlife Happiness project. And today we have another unusual guest. My guest today is angel. And before I sort of give you a little bit of info about him, what makes him unique to this program is he's sort of a specialist, as it were, in this concept of, of routine, a term he refers to as routinology, and how that can contribute to your happiness. So a bit about angel. He was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He's trained in philosophy, medicine and psychiatry. He is an emergency medical physician. He serves and advises in healthcare, technology and the nonprofit sector. And if that wasn't enough, he is also author of the book art of the Routine.
And on that note, it's lovely to have you to our podcast today, angel. Thank you.
[00:01:11] Speaker B: Thank you. It's a great pleasure.
[00:01:13] Speaker A: Okay, so let's dig right into it. This concept of routine, can you describe for us what you mean by routinology?
[00:01:28] Speaker B: Yeah, well, that's a little bit of a made up term, but, you know, routine, routineology is the study of something like zoology or the sort. And so it's the study, really, of routine. And interestingly enough, routine and the concepts of it are not necessarily like habits. You know, there's some interesting thinking about habits. Routines are often sometimes a combination of habits or a combination of things that you think. You don't have to think, you. You think through them to be actually actively do them, you know, to have meaning in the sort. But really, this started just as a little background as an emergency physician. We were setting up geriatric emergency departments just like we have pediatric emergency departments, as we used to say, that, you know, little ones are not just little adults and people that are older. There's a little bit of difference in how you treat them and their physiology. And as we get older and age, things change as they are when we're developing and we're young. And I studied people that were over 100 years old, centenarians. And I found some really interesting things in both interviewing them and some of the literature and the studies that I did. And one was that they had two things that were really common among all of them. That they had a very stable environment and namely both physical and social, and that they did things with great regularity, whatever it might be. Oh, every day at 04:00 I have a scotch, you know, or so forth. But what they did varied tremendously. Sometimes they did unhealthy things. I think it was Jeanne Clement, who lived to be 110 or 15 years old, one of the oldest humans. She had to have a smoke every day at a certain time. Now, that doesn't sound very healthy in the sort, does it? But basically what I realized is that maybe there was something not just to longevity and aging, but for us, about the importance of having a stable environment and having a routine. I noticed that throughout history, humans migrate, and they migrate to develop food, water, shelter, develop the ability to have a very stable environment. And I noticed that also people who were high performers seemed to have a certain amount of order and organization and routine. I wrote in the book a little bit about the Rolling Stones, who you think would be very spontaneous and not particularly routine or organized, but in fact, they have to have everything exactly the same at every venue that they go to, and they have go through the same process each time, perfectly timed prior to their being on stage, for example. So, and I noticed this was maybe the case of how we care for the young. We noticed that when we care for the young, there has to be a little bit of timeliness and routine and regularity in the sort that occurs, and also for businesses. So this got me thinking about how it connected to our bodies, because our physiology has a lot of rhythm and a lot of regularity and really a lot of routine. And when we're disrupted in our body functions, or if we're disrupted in how we perceive or work with the world, then things kind of tend to disrupt themselves, and we become not stable and not have, so to speak, homeostasis. But our bodies, either from healing, from health, or from situations, all want to go back to that status. They want to have stability, homeostasis, and get a sense of routine, especially when they've been disrupted. So that's a little more than you might want to know, but that's kind of the essence of what the thinking and the theory is about.
[00:04:59] Speaker A: So let's discuss this for some of our listeners and viewers that are listening to this. Thinking. I can relate to this routine allows me to function better in my life. But perhaps the next thought is, huh. I thought being spontaneous is what made life exciting. It seems that spontaneity is at odds with this concept. What do you say to that?
[00:05:30] Speaker B: Well, I really actually don't think so. And I think people, I've spoken to many people that believe they're spontaneous, like, they suddenly have to go to do things, or I can do things in the last moment. But when you really study those folks, I remember thinking of a pretty high end executive that would go to London whenever they need to in New York, and he thought he was very spontaneous and very able to be mobile and the sort in their thinking. But when you started to think about, well, when you get on an airplane, do you just get on any seat because you don't care what seat? You know, I know exactly what seat I want. I said, you go to any flight at any time? He goes, no, no, no, I take the flight so that I get there on time to be able to catch my sleep and my circadian. And did you go to any hotel? Anyone? Oh, no. I know exactly the hotel that I want where I am. So most of us, if we examine ourselves, we're not as spontaneous, but spontaneity often is a reaction to us feeling that we can be free, that we can actually act in a way that takes us away from our obligations, so to speak, from our responsibilities at times. And at other times, you know, if you study artists, for example, this was very common, say, well, artists are just very spontaneous about what they believe or feel or might create or think about. But in fact, whether it's Andy Warhol, for example, had an incredible routine about when he took his walk, when they ate, Einstein had the same one, and when they actually produced and the sort sometimes spontaneity, I'm not saying spontaneity can't be bad, but the body seeks a little bit of regularity. And for me, the main thing that I want to point out is that what's important when you try to recreate from a disrupted life or things that have happened is that you start with a concept of something that might make you happy, that you may enjoy, that gives you meaning, that gives you purpose, but you need to stick with it for a little bit. You have to find a little bit of rhythm in the sort. So it's not one day Pilates and the next day, oh, I didn't like that. I'm going to go do yoga. I'm saying in regard to, like, exercise routines, for example, or breakfast routines or eating, the body is very adaptable. Humans are very adaptable. And consequently, you can change the, what you want to do, give it a little bit of time, give it a little bit of a routine in a stable environment, and then you can move on from there.
[00:07:57] Speaker A: So I think this is fantastic. I think this is a great message because the feedback we get from some of these guests that we have had, people will say, oh, my gosh, that guest you had is so fascinating, so interesting. They're so lucky. They found their thing. And as you start to really ask more questions and dig deeper, what's revealed is it's not that that person couldn't make that their thing themselves. It's just that they tried it once or twice, said, I'm not any good at this, and then bailed. And then they're back to feeling like, well, I guess maybe I'm not good at this or that, and now I'm feeling sort of lost. So the message I'm getting from you is now, of course, there will be things that maybe just are out of your depth and you're not meant to participate in, but there's certainly an array of things that it's, you really have to be invested and again, make it part of your routine before you can honestly say this isn't working out right.
[00:09:09] Speaker B: So part of the art of routine is really the what, what you decide to do. That's the art where you decide to choose a. Because so you want to delve into, let's say, winemaking. We did a little bit of that in a moment where we try to recreate our own light and the sword, you know, so it just, there are many different things that one might do. Creating those things, though, that's a little bit of the art. But when you do them, you need to do them in a way to be successful. That gives you a sense of stability and a sense of. And in itself, when you start doing these routines and doing with regularity, the way the body and the mind works is that it starts to give you a sense of fulfillment when you begin something and end something and you do it again and you do it over again. So the body can easily adapt to that environment or that routine.
[00:10:04] Speaker A: So here's another question.
How do you feel about social media in particular and technology and our, well, I might say overuse of them. And, you know, it's just become such a huge part of everybody's life. Do you think this impacts people's ability to maintain structure and routine in their life?
[00:10:31] Speaker B: Well, yes, and it depends, you know, obviously, how you, how you use social media and what you do. So one aspect of social media is that it has an addictive quality. Now, addiction, like drugs, like we deal in, the emergency department of the sort, are things that then begin to affect your physiology. Right? So if you drink too much caffeine, you can just get off it. If you take too much heroin or you do, you know, so there's an addictive aspect to being stuck onto your phone, for example, your cell phone. And there's a certain addictive aspect to being online at all times and following these pieces, you know, so I think, number one is that one has to be very careful. You know, I noticed, I think it was in Florida recently, that they're trying to limit children's time under 16 years of age to actually being able to have how much online they have. So sometimes that becomes part of a routine. You know, for example, for people in their working life, they may have a morning routine, a wake up routine that get your emails, you know, sort of routine, and then maybe they're going to be just web surfing on things of interest that they do in the evening. So it's not that it's bad. It's just that when it becomes too addictive on one subject or it takes up too much time away from being able to socially interact with others, what.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: Would you say to somebody listening to this program who said, I completely understand what angel is saying, and I get the concept, but I'm kind of all over the place, and I'm ready to sort of engage and make this part of my life. What would you recommend or what first steps would you suggest for people who really wanted to give more order and structure through routine to their life?
[00:12:23] Speaker B: Right. So, you know, part of it is kind of like a little bit like starting small and trying to find something that you can do a regular basis, you know, on a daily basis. So often people talk about how they exercise or how they eat. You know, I remember a story a little bit ago about a friend who I was asked, I was asked about who had just recently gotten divorced, lost custody of their child, lost their job, stopped exercising, got into bad health and wanted to get back in. Now, that's an extreme example of the person maybe you're speaking about, you know, and they asked me, he says, well, doctor, doctor Iskovich, Doctor I, they call me on these, some of these, because my name is hard to pronounce. Can you tell us, give us a prescription? I said, well, you know, I don't really like to be prescriptive. This is not, I'm not treating people with this piece. This book was meant to be an aspect of human nature that you might get some insight and you might get some perspective that then you can maybe take a few actions. But they push me to say, what do I do to get this person started? And I said, you know what? Get a dog. Okay? That starts so interestingly enough, he did just that. Now, there's a little danger in giving that prescription because you don't know if they're a dog person. You don't know that they'll take good care of them. You know, it's a little what this does is they have a lot of routine and a lot of habitual aspects. So they, you're going to have to walk them once or twice a day. You're going to have to feed them at a certain time. And it begins to organize what you do in life. If you want a prescriptive for the right person, that people that are extremely disrupted, they're not being successful. They're a little bit too much all over the place. That's, for example, one type of thing that you can do, another that I found really simple, a simple prescription. It can be used with our social technology and cell phones today. A daily affirmation you just put on your phone at seven in the morning, daily affirmation, it comes up. And that affirmation can be anything from, hey, what the day is going to be like and that you're going to have a great day, for example, in a positive way. Or today I'm going to do the following. And in fact, the history of affirmations, which go back to some religions, for example, evening prayer has a lot to do with this type of thing, to end the day and to begin a day anew. So simple things like using affirmations morning, and they can be whatever you want, they can be an organizing aspect, but you start to do it regularly, and you start to do it daily, it becomes a little bit of a habit and it makes you complete something that begins kind of the organization of what you're going to do next.
[00:15:07] Speaker A: I also think listening to talk about this, another point that kind of keeps entering my mind is how this is such a huge part of retirement. And this is a topic that we continue to chat about on this program in that when we think of midlife, if you're fortunate enough, people start to think about when they will be in a position financially to retiree. And, you know, then they have this freedom to pursue different interests and live this life outside of work. But I know, as I'm sure you have, I have friends who've done that. They've quit working and they find themselves sort of lost. And where I think this ties into your concept of routine is that work is just that, right? You get into your car at the same time you go to work, you probably have your meeting scheduled.
There's a routine there when you have lunch, the hours you work, the people you work with, and then you take that away and it's, I actually don't have to get up for any particular thing. Theoretically, I could sleep until eight one day, nine the next, which seems super thrilling and exciting when you've been working your whole life. But I think, and has proven to be the case time and time again with people we've spoken to, that when you break that routine, they sort of feel like they're just floating in the universe and they're lacking direction, purpose, focus. And I think this all ties into your concept of routine.
[00:16:59] Speaker B: Yeah. Also, what's important, too, is because I like to speak of routine as together. That's why I talk about a time bubble, which is basically the bubble is your environment. It's very flexible and it can burst, and your routines within it can burst. And even in the situations that you're talking about, depending on the work, you have not only routines and the sort, but you also have physical environments that are used to going into. You become accustomed to. Home is interesting in that way, like what happened with COVID where suddenly people had to be more at home and realized, oh, my goodness, why never paid attention to that couch now that I'm home all the time.
Covid was something that really disrupted our routines. But in retirement, one has to understand that, and often it can vary, but it's where your work, your purpose, an aspect of your purpose has been this work, the relevance that you have around others. And when you disengage, you suddenly don't have that environment, you don't have those routines. But more importantly, both a stable environment and some good routines give you meaning, give you purpose.
So you become unhappy, you know, and happiness, as the happiness project is about, can be described in many different ways. It's actually the number one course at Yale right now. You know, the happiness course is the most over sought, I believe it. So people are trying to find their way, but it is about kind of the elements of enjoyment and satisfaction and purpose. You know, these are the things. Enjoyment is kind of the feeling that you get, you know, from our more perceived and feelings that you get, you know, satisfaction comes by completing something, you know. And purpose is that you have somebody of a passion that meets some type of need, something occurs. Those are usually three elements that, for example, Doctor Birx from Harvard, who is an expert on happiness and has a lot of it has to do. So when you leave, you're trying to find again that enjoyment, that satisfaction and that purpose.
And somewhere some people, for example, I don't take, for example, physicians. Physicians are notorious to not wanting to retire. When they retired, many of them gave so much to the profession, they have absolutely no interest. They don't know what to do. They've had no other areas. They've explored or places they've wanted necessarily to travel that they become incredibly depressed, you know, and this is a pretty well known thing among physicians, at least physicians of my erade have been that way where people now are learning to have a better work life balance and to do more than just practice medicine 24 hours a day. So I think in retirement, what's important is to begin to really try to explore, okay, not just the whats, but the kinds of things. And usually things like exercise, which are often limited in work. It might be depending what kind of work you do, but our sometimes limited is a great place to begin because it's, you know, it's like if you don't have your health, especially if you're retiring, you could be younger as well. But if you don't have your health, you know, like your parents, if you're healthy, you don't have anything, you know, but it's like I often speak as I did recently in a little talk and, you know, if you have, if you're healthy, you have many, many wishes, but if you're not healthy, you have only one wish, you know? And so that part of a focus of your health for people that retire begins to be an important focus, I think, to begin with, to develop your routines and the environments that you do these things, learning what it is you like, they become more essential as you become older. Health becomes more essential because things begin to happen to you as you get a little bit older. They can happen when you're younger too.
And then the other is doing things that you find that you have purpose or meaning. And a lot of that is knowing a little bit about yourself and knowing what skills you have and what skills you can bring forward, just as you're doing in this podcast.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Well, what's really interesting, and I think it's worth mentioning, is how routine actually brought me to meet you. So I moved to this community I live in two years ago and every day I run and I run it the same time. Not only do I run at the same time, but I essentially run the same route. Sometimes I modify it, but honestly, it's usually the same route. I mention this because on those runs that I do, I would pass people who are walking, running or biking, and they themselves had a routine. So I'm going about my business day to day, doing my run in the morning, and I keep passing this lovely woman who keeps smiling at me and we say hello. She's walking her two adorable dogs. And this went on for maybe a year until eventually I sort of said, okay. Took my headset off and said, hi, I feel like we should probably introduce ourselves. You know, we've been passing each other, and I actually look forward to seeing you. And she said, oh, my gosh, I'm the same way. I'm always wondering when you're going to come around the corner. We introduce ourselves, and now we're fast friends. So what I take away from that is not only like you're talking about health and fitness, obviously, that's a huge routine, plays a huge part in that component. But over and above that, social benefits.
Doing the same thing usually involves seeing the same people, and that gives way to new friendships and honestly moving somewhere where I knew nobody. I have met, I can honestly say I have met more people running who they themselves have a routine of their own. I've met more people and developed more of a sense of community from that.
[00:23:31] Speaker B: Than anything else, and that's a part of it. I remember a similar situation like the one get a dog that I told you about. That'll start you on the routines that basically decided to start on exercise. As I was speaking a little bit about health and exercise, and he had this mentor that he was running on the treadmill next to, or the elliptical and the sort. And that person was incredibly, incredibly routine, maybe overly structured, you could argue, like disciplined.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: Yeah, right.
[00:24:05] Speaker B: Very disciplined. And he became friends. And then he started suddenly. He began to exercise on a regular basis. Suddenly. He always made the time to have the 04:00 or 03:00 coffee with him. You know, I speak about circadian rhythms and why 03:00 is a good time, why the English have tea, and why, you know, in the spanish cultures, there used to be siesta and sleep is because what's happening with our physiology and our, and our routine, so we have to be cognizant. I speak quite a bit about how our body works to also have quite a bit of rhythm and needs to do things at a certain time. But pretty soon that began to give them a certain amount of structure in life. And so, you know, you're going to do your runs when you do them. You know, a little bit of the time helps you organize your day, you know, to do the things that you might do your artwork, prepare for your podcast, or do what you do. I was on, on podcasts and they consistently a couple funny podcasts that would, would say, well, I have no routine.
I travel all the time this way or that way. I get here any way I want. They want to believe they're spontaneous, but I said, yeah, but somehow you got here at the right time to actually interview me. And this person was a comedian. And I said, you have any, you're a comedian? Do you do us? What do you do? You do a stand up routine? What's that mean? And I say, do you prepare it all before it have a little bit of superstitions or things that you do? You'll see this in athletes, that there's superstitions and things of that sort, routines that they follow which centers them and centers someone. So there's a lot to this aspect. And this is what we do in medicine. When people that have actually significant illness, severe depressions, psychiatric breaks, schizophrenia, what do we do? We put them in a very stable environment. We need them to. And we get them to eat at the same time and do things. And we get back to a sense of stability and not disorganization.
And so it's not the only thing the mind wants. We're complex animals, but it's a kind of important factor to our maintaining stability. And this is what we do in medicine. Whenever there is a disruption of how the body works or if you're traumatized and the sort, we try to create a stable environment and get routine back in your basic functions of how you eat, how you move, how you exercise, and where you are.
[00:26:38] Speaker A: Right. So it's. I look at this almost as a first step, right? So you establish routine in your life as sort of, you create a base and structure, a framework for your day to day activity. And once you've locked that in, then you're free to build upon that and explore different things. But ultimately, at the core of it all, there has to be some sense of routine. And I like what you're saying because I can definitely relate to this idea of thinking, oh, no, no, I don't do that. I'm free to do this and this, and I'm kind of all over the place. But when I really think about it, the things that I'm most successful at and certainly the things that I'm more most secure with and rewarded by and frankly, happier because of, there's always an element of structure and knowing my next steps and feeling like I have kind of control over the situation.
[00:27:47] Speaker B: Right. And you can also, I remember working with a couple different, you know, executives that I've seen that I did that work, and they might organize themselves. So there's times in the day that are better. The way most of our bodies work, we have a little bit of difference. Some of us are night owls. Some of us are larks. And there's a little bit of difference in timing. But, you know, for example, in the mornings of really, there are certain times that are better for your body to actually exercise in general, speaking. I'm not speaking for everyone. There's generally in the morning, your functions are really strong at very technical work, writing, doing calculations, doing work. By the time it gets to be 10:00 or so to noon, you begin to. Engagement begins. A great time to engage. I used to speak to our sales people or our recruiters or whoever it was that we're working with or different companies that I've worked with, and they said, yeah, you know, from ten to two, then through lunch, engagement is a really. It's a great time to socially engage. By the time you get to be 03:00 your cortisol levels have dropped. People get to be hungry. Your concentration isn't very good. In fact, some companies decided, go home and we'll pick you back up at 07:00. This happened during COVID to start doing some work again.
So part of it was that you can actually organize your time to do the more structured things and then maybe leave in the mid to later afternoons for more spontaneous aspects to. If it's your work life or your daily. Or your daily life.
I know that, you know, one of the things that really struck me particularly about World War Two, and I remember the statement was that, you know, people's lives during wars are completely disrupted. You know, they're. They're. During COVID our lives were really disrupted. And if it lasts a long time, you would ask someone, well, you know, what is it. What is it that you want? What is it that you long for after all of this disruption where you're going down to bomb shelters and they just tell you that I just like to have, again, a routine life, a normal life. I'd like to have a life that I can depend and have certainty with and. And do things that I do. And so that's an aspect of how we are, how we're built in our human nature. And I think I've. Now that, for example, that Covid has really combed itself down, you're seeing a lot of this activity because it was quite. Quite a changing event for people to have burst their time bubbles, as I like to call them, and to try to recreate new time bubbles, as one might on retirement or as one might in different stress situations throughout one's life. So I think that's what really we're all about. And this is part of life. You have to enjoy being and understand that things become disrupted and you have to take a little bit of joy in being able to find meaning by basically taking a little bit of a hold of it and trying to create routine and create new environments and essentially a new life for a period of time until it gets disrupted again.
[00:31:03] Speaker A: Right. Right. And I like that you've, through this conversation today, you've dispelled any thought that somebody would have in terms of, you know, oh, routine structure. Like, I started this program by saying, you know, that this is at odds with living some sort of passionate, exciting life. And I think you've really driven the point home. And I can certainly appreciate now that routine is what allows you to thrive.
It's just once you have that in place, you're free to go and explore and thrive and be happy. But it would be for us to not acknowledge that, I think would be doing ourselves a disservice. Because, as you said, I think if everyone really is left to sort of examine their own life and the way they function, the way they think, I think we can all relate to that and acknowledge that, in fact, routine does play a huge part. And without it, it makes us a little nervous. A little. We're not sure where things are going. We like to know how things are going to play out. And I so appreciate you being a guest on our show today, angel. I think it's given us a lot to think about, and you've been a really interesting guest, and I so appreciate it.
[00:32:34] Speaker B: My pleasure. My pleasure. You're a great host.
[00:32:37] Speaker A: Well, thank you. I'm trying my best. Well, on that note, I'm sure a lot of you probably have routine in every, you know, even when you listen to podcasts, you may be listening at the same time every day. Who knows? And with that, we will see you next time on the midlife happiness project.
[00:33:00] Speaker B: It's a great day.
[00:33:02] Speaker A: It's a good day.
