From Routine to Ritual: How to Add Meaning to Your Daily Habits

Michael Norton shares 5 key insights from The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions.

Do you have any rituals in your life? You probably have habits -- like brushing your teeth, exercising, meals with your family. But if you engage in routines like these mindfully they can become rituals, deeply meaningful practices that bring an extra layer of joy to your ordinary life. Michael Norton explains how to embrace this in his new book The Ritual Effect: From Habit to Ritual, Harness the Surprising Power of Everyday Actions. Michael is a Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School and the coauthor of Happy Money: The Science of Happier Spending. Read or listen to his big ideas below:

The 5 key insights:

1. Habits are black and white, but rituals can be technicolor.

2. Rituals are more DIY than you might think.

3. Food can be more than just food.

4. There are four lessons with relationship rituals.

5. Rituals do a lot of work for us at work.

1. Habits are black and white, but rituals can be technicolor.

Think of your routine before you go to bed at night or when you wake up in the morning. Do you shower first and then brush your teeth? Or do you brush your teeth and then shower? About half of people shower and then brush their teeth, and the other half brush their teeth and then shower. There’s also a tiny percentage of people who do both at the same time, but most do one and then the other.

Now think of which order you prefer and then imagine you suddenly have to switch and do the opposite. Think for a moment about how doing the opposite makes you feel. We find that about half of people say they don’t care. The other half of people say they would rather not, that it would feel weird or off.