As summer time comes to close a lot of us are going to be dreading September. Between commuter traffic, public transport, and back to school, everything is getting busier. But for many people the return to order is a blessing and a time to reset and plan for the months ahead.
"September is the new January," says psychologist Pádraig Walsh. Walsh joined 2FM's Morning with Laura Fox to talk through why September is a mini New Year and a great time to reset with a new routine. "September is that one thing that has been embedded into our psyche from the age of four, with back to school. I haven't gone back to school in decades, but still I know the 1st of September is kicking around. Even at that, I will start to think about new lunch boxes, or meal planning, or I'm gonna change myself, I'm going to get into a new routine. What I'm going to do is, I'm going to try and piggyback on some new habits onto this big change."
Summer is a time for holidays and festivals. But when we get to September, "our entire seasonality behaviour changes towards bedding down and getting into a routine. You go back decades, and autumn time was the time of harvest, to save things for the winter with: cut the cord, pick everything that had been growing during the summer, and then bed in for the winter."
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Some people thrive off routine more than others, and for them routine is "incredibly important". When it comes to the usual Monday to Friday we have our regular routines that we don't have to think about. We get up, brush out teeth, put on our clothes and "there's nothing different, there’s nothing to think about", says Walsh. "That's the big thing, that when we're in a routine what we're actually doing is reducing what's called our cognitive load. We're having to think less. Our minds like thinking less and when we have a routine we don't necessarily have to think as much, we just 'do'. That’s what a routine offers us."
Routine, predictability and consistency is "one of the greatest gifts" we can give to children in a school or home setting, because it breeds safety, says Walsh. "I often talk with friends and they say 'my kids are saying I'm boring, or they're bored, or they're saying we always do the same thing, or you always say that, you always do the same thing', and I go, 'you are doing a great job as a parent'. Because what you're actually doing is you're creating this cocoon of safety around your child."
What is habit stacking?
"September and January are those moments [in the year ]of what I like to call contextual disruption. There’s a disruption to our routine and we know that after that point, in September, what we're going to have is some sort of solid routine. But in this little period, at the end of August and start of September, we have a choice, we have opportunities to go 'I really wanted to change something in my life, build a different routine, meal plan, exercise more, read more, I wanted to do some sort of self improvement or some kind of collective improvement for me and all those around me."
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From RTÉ 2FM's Morning with Laura Fox, Psychologist Padraig Walsh on why September is the new January and how you can get set with a new routine
"Habit stacking is saying: it's really difficult to just out of nowhere pluck this idea that at 6:00 in the morning I'm gonna get up and go to the gym. It's really difficult because you have no existing structure or plan. Habit stacking is stacking a new habit on to an existing thing."
"An example might be, I want to stretch. A very simple small habit. I'm going to say, 'OK every morning I spend 2 minutes waiting for the kettle to boil for my cup of tea. I am going to stretch while doing that. The habit is I'm waiting for my kettle to boil, and the habit that I'm going to stack on to that is a bit of stretching."
Similarly, you could stack on reading a book, listening to a podcast, or talking to someone new to your daily commute. It's not going to feel "dramatically uncomfortable" for you, "it's simple, it’s easy, it's stacked. It just fits into your existing routine."
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What is the best way to change your routine?
If it’s going to the gym, for example, that you want to add to your routine, "the best piece of equipment in the gym is your friend," says Walsh. "The person that you go with or the person who holds you accountable. The most important thing is to have that person holding you to account." That can be someone physically there with you or someone who checks in on you with a text so you’re "building that social accountability"."The one thing we know about willpower is that it is a cruel mistress. It can be there one day and gone the next. We can't rely on that, so we build it into a routine." This goes for any habit you want to start. "One of my ones was, when I'm in the car if I'm doing a long commute, I'm going to ring somebody I haven’t rang in ages."
"It’s these times at the end of August, start of September, the two weeks after Christmas into the new year, where you go, OK we've got a moment of contextual disruption. We’ve got a chance to kind of set a routine for ourselves. Because come the end of October you're going to be kind of embedded into your routine. It's going to be a little bit more difficult to change that for yourself. It's going to be a bit a bit more difficult to change it for your kids. So this is the time where you sit down and think, what's important to me? What's important to my loved ones? And if those things are important to us, what are the behaviours that we do that represent that and how can we build them into a routine?"
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If things are too regimented does it make it stressful? "Very much so. We’re all human. There are always going to be times where our routine gets disrupted. I often think about routines like a wire. You take a a wire and you bend it and pull it, it's malleable. It actually stays together because it's flexible. They build bridges like that. Whereas if you have something that's really rigid, like those old wooden rulers that we had in school, it feels really strong, but you bend it a little bit and it snaps and it can never get back together. So think about your routines like that."
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"What I like to do is think about a day or sticking to a routine like a gold, silver or bronze. Sometimes you will have a good week where you get the gold medal, where you've done everything really well and things are going perfectly. There are times where you probably get a silver medal, it’s like 'OK, it’s grand, it’s not as perfect as I want it but that’s OK'. Then there are times where you do the bare minimum and that's the bronze day. You still got a medal, you’re sticking with it, but sometimes it just doesn't happen and that's OK. But then there comes a point where we say, OK we need to get back into this, let's just be forgiving to ourselves, forgiving to each other, let's show some self compassion and let's get back into the routine."
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The views expressed here are those of the author and do not represent or reflect the views of RTÉ
