DART 441
Routine
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Can everyday tasks or habits contribute to a more organized and meaningful life?
1. Research
Actions or tasks regularly followed or repeated everyday. Often it
becomes mechanical and becomes molded into our lives.
On the other side, routine and repetition can become ordinary and monotone.
“As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge.” (Henry Van Dyke)
Life becomes meaningful when it feels important in terms of:
-Significance
-Purpose
-Coherence
“The notion that meaning can be found in mundane habits and patterns is a bit surprising.”
(University of Missouri psychologist Samantha Heintzelman)
2. Survey
In order to better understand what a student’s routine represent in general, we did a small survey. This survey of 10 questions helped us gather information of what tasks or activities where performed and at approximately what time.
1. What is the first thing you do in the morning?
2. What do you do for breakfast?
3. What do you do after breakfast during the week?
4 .When do you leave the house?
5. What do you do while taking a mean of transport?
6. When do you do your homework?
7. Where do you do your homework?
8. Do you have daily habits?
9. What do you do before going to bed?
10. Can you detail your routine during a regular day?
3. Results of the survey
Through our survey and gathering of pictures/videos of students’ daily routines , we were able to see a particular pattern. Although we surveyed students of different ages and programs, the majority of routines were predictable and all very similar.
We believe that although routines have both their advantages and disadvantages, we should all take the time to take a break and have a look back on our daily tasks, activities and habits.
Why do we do what we do?
Why do have a specific order?
Who implemented routines?
There is no specific answer to any of these, however we can notice through our routines that we are becoming more distant and more insensitive to life in a way. Our overwhelming routines have become mechanical,programmed and conditioned.
“We’ve become the machines.We’re losing our feeling, becoming numb and docile to the tragedies that we face in our every day lives.” (J.Ivy, Here I Am: Then & Now)
Test video 1
4. Conclusion
We have decided to create a video compilation by asking our
student friends to send us short clips of their routines and juxtaposing it with our own daily taks and activities.With the use of this compilation, we want to do show how similar if not almost identical most students’ daily routines are.We want to show how easily we are losing meaning in what we do. Tasks are more and more performed out of habit rather than purpose, which can be compared to robots or machines that have been programmed to perform and not think. Our goal is for students or anyone to reflect on their repetitive routines that have in some way defined and framed us since we were born. Our routines have changed with time but the fact remains that we cannot seem to find a balance and this is an issue most of us have yet to resolve.
In order to translate the idea of order and predictability, we chose to divide our video into different categories as would any normal day of a student. The categories include morning tasks, means of transportation, tasks performed at school, activities carried out after classes and finally end-of-day tasks. We have also decided to emphisize on repetition by compiling the same activities performed by different students side by side at certain moments in the videos while other parts show variations of tasks. Also, we added text at both the beginning and end of the video that simply states the obvious, which is that everything we do is repeated purposely or unconsciously everyday.
5. Final video
