We've recently had a little bit of turnover in our pack house. The two employees working there left and hiring and training new people has, of course been challenging, but also been very fruitful. Having this break in the process has forced us to examine processes and routines. It's made us take a magnifying glass to look at what we're doing, how we're doing it, and how we ought to be doing it.
The result is a new system, and a new set of routines. More efficient cleaning, better prep, better communication and information sharing. In a business like ours, which revolves around weekly outcomes, everything is routine: design routine, execute routine, improve routine, rinse, repeat.
For a long time I loathed routine. Didn't like the idea of calendars, morning routines, repetition of any kind.
I wanted to avoid doing the same thing twice as much as possible.
Eventually I realized if my heart didn't keep up it's routine, I'd die. Same with my lungs and nervous system.
If the sun, stars and moon didn't keep up their routines, things would fall apart at an even larger scale.
If plants didn't keep up their routines where would we be? Just about every living thing, is a plant, eats plants, or eats things that eat plants.
Even skipping as simple a routine as brushing our teeth can lead to such terrible decay that we die - especially in our very sugary 21st Century.
All of the things we cherish, enjoy, and rely upon, are made possible by the tick-tocking of routines across the natural and living world.
They are the bedrock foundation of actions that make all of those discrete memories and joys possible.
Thank you plants, for, like clockwork, growing steadily every time you have both sun and water - we can work with that.
Thank you tasty veggies for smelling delicious when we apply heat and time in just the right way - we can work with that too.
Thank you to all the "routines" out there - human-driven every day banal work and jobs - the in between stuff that's gotta happen but maybe we don't like so much. Thank you to all of the conscious, unconscious, natural, and even cosmic Routines - you are what underpins all existence.
