As someone who's trying to optimize his life better, what strikes me the most is this part of the post:
For my consistent experience has been that the more
routine I can make the basic practical aspects of my life,
the more I am able to be energetic—and
spontaneous—about intellectual and other things.
This reminds of the book Uncertainty that I'm reading. Very interesting indeed.
This is a wonderful apologia for the needy/homely lifestyle... conserving energy for something important.
And the flipside of course: pity on the extravagant, wild, dress up and party lifestyle: a way to comfort yourself if you don't have anything deeply rewarding to do.
There's a great book by brazilian explorer Amyr Klink[1] where he tells the story of how he became the first person to cross the Atlantic by rowing a small boat.
He starts out rowing whenever he feels like it, sometimes rowing to the excess of 16 hours in a single day.
So Amyr adopts a regular "work" schedule, rowing at most 8 hours a day, but allowing 2 extra hours whenever he feels energetic and motivated.
He then becomes so productive that he's able to cut 40 days from his initial schedule (it took him 100 days as opposed to 140 days to cross from Africa to South America).
Funnily enough I think this applies to business as well. I was at the YC User Acquisition conference the other day and what was striking was just how many processes the most successful companies have locked down. It frees you up to be creative.
It's part of an increasing awareness and importance of habits in a business context. The surge in popularity for game mechanics was largely directed at creating habits for consumers, creating an entertaining and engaging use case where they didn't have to think too much. Thinking is hard.
A business, at its core, is made up of a people. Well defined processes are the equivalent of habits for a business - common practices where the expected behavior is straightforward enough that the company doesn't have to think very much. This, as you say, frees you up to be an active thinker on many other topics.
