Rhythms, routines, and crafting a rule of life

Executive overview

Most people's lives are shaped by default — work, obligations, and other people's expectations fill the time without consent. A rule of life (Latin: regula vitae) is a deliberate practice of identifying orienting values and stabilizing practices to reclaim agency over how life is lived.

The pandemic exposed how dependent most people were on external structures (work schedules, commutes) to give their days meaning. Intentional understimulation — not as escape but as reset — is the starting point for building a more self-directed life.

A rule of life is not a goal-setting system; it is a way of being.

The rule of life framework

• Every life is already ruled by something — the question is what rules it
• "Rule" comes from regula: that which regulates, gives shape and regularity to life
• The framework has two hands: orienting values (why) and stabilizing practices (what)
• Values and practices are worked out iteratively, not in sequence
• A written rule should be 80% descriptive of what you already do, 20% aspirational — otherwise it becomes a document of despair
• Start by adding one new thing, not overhauling everything

Orienting values

• Five values that reflect how you actually make decisions and spend energy
• Test: if someone followed you for a week, what four values would they observe? The fifth is the aspirational one
• Values can be abstract at first (e.g. "family") but sharpen them toward concrete commitments (e.g. "quantity time, not quality time")
• Quality time is what happens by accident during large quantities of shared time
• Values are personal — resist prescribing them to others

Stabilizing practices: the five-finger framework

• One practice per time horizon: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annually
• Start with what you already do; build from there
• "Daily" means at least four out of seven days — aim for six or seven, but don't keep score
• Quarterly is often the least developed rhythm for non-business people; the academic calendar or job structure may substitute
• Practices feel like work at first — that is intentional; you can only displace dominant work with other forms of work

Daily practice

• Identify the activities where you are "hatless" — not performing a role, just existing
• For John Drury: morning and evening prayer (the ancient daily office — Vespers, Morning Prayer)
• For others it might be a daily workout — the content matters less than the consistency and the hatlessness
• The daily practice is the anchor; other rhythms build around it

Weekly Sabbath practice

• A 24-hour period, not a full day defined by midnight-to-midnight — pick a clear start and end time
• Drury's practice: 5pm Friday to 5pm Saturday; no email, no student texts, no laptop
• The Sabbath begins with sleep — the most hatless activity — so you are halfway through before Saturday morning
• Identify one symbol of work to step away from (a pen, a laptop) and one restorative thing to add
• Start small: Drury began with two hours a week after joining a procrastination support group in 2009; the dedicated rest made him more productive on the other six days
• Do not keep the Sabbath in order to become more productive — but you will

Work-life balance is a category error

• "Work-life balance" frames work and life as two equal competitors — they are not
• Life is the whole; work is one part of life
• Work will not be beautiful if it is constant — limits protect the quality of the work, not just the worker
• The terms of balance must be set by life, never by work
• Agency: most people have more agency over their time than they believe

Values, goals, and how they differ

• Goals are for accomplishing things; a rule of life is for living well
• Treating the body or parenting as a project imposes the wrong framework on a relationship
• "What kind of person do I want to be?" is a different question from "What do I want to achieve?"
• A form of life is judged by the fruit it bears now, not at the end of a series of steps