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Wheel of Sansara: principles of the fight against routine

Under the cut, an article for those who, on the one hand, burns out emotionally in a routine, is stressed, notes increased anxiety, and, on the other hand, should continue to concentrate on work tasks and somehow take them out.



Article author: Anton Savchenkov - product owner in Dodo Pizza. I used to develop the “Delivery” project (a b2b product for the franchisee), had a hand in accelerating delivery throughout the network . Now the restaurant project is developing (a product for guests and franchisees).

For me, routine is an exhausting monotony and a feeling of endless repetition of what is happening, like a template with which I am trying to cope. This is a state in which I experience very large amplitude emotions.

Routine Wheel Pattern


Once I thought about how this wound up pattern looks in my work, what circle the wheel rolls in. And I found out that the cycle closes in just three events.

Event number 1. Burning fart. A burning fart is a problem familiar to many. Observations led me to the conclusion that it begins to burn when someone (product, lead from another team, engineer from your team, any person) comes without warning and says that something needs to be done.

The first reaction option is an active denial: “No, I / we have a lot of things, projects, plans, a roadmap scheduled before the end of the year, not up to these your ideas.” The second reaction option is active agreement: “Yes, let's do it right tomorrow, but why pull it, let's do it right now.” In any of these cases, a blazing fart will be a characteristic symptom.

There is another option of ignition - someone comes and says that I did something wrong.
Whether it’s the requested feedback or feedback that you didn’t ask for. It's hard to listen to your shoals (which maybe not shoals). Energy jumps, emotions have to look for a peaceful way out. For example, through the back door.

Event number 2. Defocus attention. The situations described above suck out the focus from me, I begin to lose control of my attention. The biggest defocusing is due to the inability to calmly perceive the opinions of others about my own actions, in which I invested in energy and time.

Focus and work in the flow - a luxury that is available to almost anyone in our time. It turns out to do some pieces of work with focus, somewhere the focus is lost, like a path in a windbreak, and now you begin unsystematic actions, they are followed by frequent distractions, jumping from one task to another, and nothing has been completed to the end of the day .

Event number 3. Anxiety and nightmares. As a result, after several iterations of the first and second, insomnia may begin. Inability to relax and rest, broken condition in the morning. Then you get up, go to work, and there he awaits an offer to participate in a new ingenious project, to correct something in the grocery legacy or just to listen to opinions about your work. The circle closes.

How to stop the barrel organ and not burn out


My routine cycle consists of these three events, the first causes the second, the second affects the third, the third starts the cycle again. If this barrel organ is not stopped, then I will burn ahead of time. Once I found myself in such a situation and realized that I had to take her under control.

Several years of hard work on myself, tons of literature, testing of various methodologies on myself have led me to share with you the three principles of the fight against routine. Of course, this is not a panacea, and in the long run it may turn out to be the survivor’s mistake, but I’ll risk it.

Principle number 1. Abstract


Too much energy goes through a burning fart and other emotional holes. You simply cease to control this moment and can no longer keep track of your attention. But if you learn to disengage, then you can solve these problems.

The principle of abstraction can be pumped through daily practices. And then there are no special secrets. Simply. Necessary. Do. It. Each. Day.

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The essence of the principle is to create conditions, processes in which a good solution will become inevitable after some time. If the processes before were mediocre, then the decisions will be situational and bad. You will build good processes, and good decisions will catch up with them.

The goal is garbage, the system is power. You set a goal, build a system, figure out every day and forget about the goal. You don’t worry that you didn’t reach it today, but you are glad that you work systematically and there is enough dopamine to continue.
Here you can help the book "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life" (author: Scott Adams).
Creating conditions is coolly pumped through the formation of conscious habits. Each, of course, himself determines what habits he needs, I will share my own.

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The first and second principles are sharpened for work and self-pumping. Having dealt with them, proceed to building a system with other people. Personally, the rituals that we have rolled out for the whole team help me in this.

It seems that this approach works because we managed to fall in love with a routine. To do this, we got a little involved in the processes and with the help of rituals stopped drowning in the routine of the day, and instead began to catch a buzz in it.

Rituals are actions that are performed on autopilot: they took and did, without any extra thoughts.

What is the use? The fact that the hefty energy of the subconscious, well, just an irrational ocean, is connected to the work of the conscious part of the pot with the help of rituals.

So, what rituals took root, and how did they appear in our arsenal?

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    But, seeing the cool results of the meeting, after a few hours, I realized that a tough timebox played a plus: if you think for a long time, discuss, then you begin to doubt too much. Doubts give rise to insecurity, insecurity inhibits action. A rigid framework mobilizes all the accumulated potential.

    It’s clear that you don’t need to rush into the pool of risks with your head, but moving with such short iterations allows you to focus so that the effectiveness of meetings grows significantly.


The ideas and approaches described here are just the result of my experience. I hope you find it useful.

  • If principles seem to be useful, then it remains to come up with practices that are relevant to you.
  • If specific practices seem worthy, then it remains to begin to do them.
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. . Nourish. Connect. Create. Be.

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