Neurodivergence and habit building

Missing the daily routine of writing; acknowledging transitions through change

location

It’s been a while.

Since I started this writing practice, I had done well. It’s been the most consistent writing I’ve done—from the writing day of, to publication, and being less precious about the writing itself and more about the practice of creation.

Then, started a new gig. Fell out of the practice.

66 Days

I attended a local entrepreneur event a couple weeks ago—been keeping busy and doing things; less public writing—that was all around building a social media following and how to generate leads from it.

It was a good, half-day conference filled with interesting talks from successful entrepreneurs who have built 30k+ following on social media platform of choice, or who help others build that for their own businesses.

One of the most notable was from Duke University Professor, Dr. Aaron Dinin: “I teach entrepreneurship & social marketing at Duke University. Software engineer with a PhD in English.” He also is a co-founder of Audience Accelerator Labs, founding it with the sponsor, host, and emcee for the event, Chris Leithe.

It was fascinating to learn about his teaching practice, and receive insight into what he teaches…as he taught us. Something stood out to me, as one of the closing lines or from the panel he later sat on:

It only takes 66 days to form a habit.

I know this comes from James Clear’s, author of Atomic Habits, and his research into forming new habits. It’s one of those popular quotes that get cited over and over that I had never figured out why it didn’t apply to me.

Routines

For my multiply neurodivergent self, habits aren’t something that are easily formed. Yes, I have habits…but they’re less intentionally developed and occur over years of development.

Like with this writing practice—where I was hitting a 100% writing target from start to when I broke it starting October 1 when I went to Colorado for the new Project Kick-off.

My routine of closing out all the windows and writing as I finished up—or started—the workday changed. I’m not working in a different environment, on a company laptop, in a different room.

The context has changed significantly.

I’m working on Colorado time, in terms of core-hours, and continuously find it difficult to come back to my desktop and…write for the day. My work-day’s ending later and this practice has taken the hit.

When the routine changes, all the other LifeOps things are impacted.

Rituals

In one of my earliest posts—Pursuing flow, kindness, and imperfection—I wrote:

  • Routines over habits. Routine is a purposeful, repeated period of action. Habits are doing things with little conscious effort. The Purpose helps me.
  • Transitions as ritual. I can't just "start" something at a specific hour. I enter and exit specific focus blocks with planned transition times & activities, from one stage of the day to another.

I love that I can look back and quote myself on it. It’s getting back to this thought: the imperfection of practice is a reality of life. For me to stick to getting things done, I have to be purposeful in my transitions, in my rituals, and how they impact my routines.

My neurodivergence is an impactful driver in this need for intentionality, just as much as sabotaging any hope of “building a habit in 66 days.”

One part craves routine, from my samefoods and safefoods to planning everything out to create clear expectations of what’s happening when, how, why, with who, and where. The other part needs novelty: doing different things, sensory seeking, cursious experimentation, and not sticking to the plan because something else is needed in that moment than the plan.

Shared experience

Over the past years, as I’ve learned about—and continue to learn & embody—neurodivergence and disability, this is one of those shared experiences that I consistently find.

Habits are hard.

Life happens and one thing can throw off everything else for days, months, years.

Moving forward, I hope to find the moment, transition, space, and place to grow this routine into one more regularly practice.

Gonna try.

Gotta keep trying.

Keep moving forward.