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" One of my Secrets of Adulthood is &amp;quot;What I do every day matters more than what I do once in a while.&amp;quot; But it&amp;#039;s easy to kid myself about what I do every day, as part of my usual routine, and what I do once in a while. If I&amp;#039;m not careful, I can convince myself of statements like &amp;quot;Most days, I go to the gym,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I eat lots of fruits and vegetables every day,&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I rarely show my exasperation in front of my daughters,&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Each day, I write for at least three hours.&amp;quot; To combat this tendency, I keep a daily Resolution Chart, where I score myself on whether I&amp;#039;ve kept my resolutions (or not). This record helps keep me honest about what my daily routine actually looks like \u2014 not what I think it looks like or what I wish it looked like. When I see on my chart that I haven&amp;#039;t really been getting much exercise, I&amp;#039;m more likely to head to the gym. In thinking about happiness, it&amp;#039;s easy to focus on exceptional events \u2014 the significant good or bad things that happen to me. However, I&amp;#039;ve realized that my ordinary, run-of-the-mill routine also has a huge influence on my happiness. I&amp;#039;m a big fan of architect Christopher Alexander&amp;#039;s strange, brilliant writing (his book A Pattern Language utterly changed the way I view my home), and I was struck by a passage from one of his books on architecture, The Timeless Way of Building: &amp;quot;Being in bed, having a shower, having breakfast in the kitchen, sitting in my study writing, walking in the garden, cooking and eating our common lunch at my office with my friends, going to the movies, taking my family to eat at a restaurant...going to bed again. There are a few more,&amp;quot; he writes of his routines. &amp;quot;There are surprisingly few [routines] in any one person&amp;#039;s way of life, perhaps no more than a dozen. Look at your own life and you will find the same. It is shocking at first, to see that there are so few patterns of events open to me. &amp;quot;Not that I want more of them. But when I see how very few of them there are, I begin to understand what huge effect these few patterns have.... If [they] are good for me, I can live well. If they are bad for me, I can&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot; For instance, a good friend inspired me to improve our busy school-day-morning routine. &amp;quot;I work, so the morning is one of the main times I see my kids,&amp;quot; she told me, &amp;quot;but for a long time, it wasn&amp;#039;t enjoyable for any of us. Too much nagging, yelling, and whining. I realized that I&amp;#039;d better do something about it, because we didn&amp;#039;t have that much time together. The morning was just too important to our family to waste it on bickering.&amp;quot; After I heard that, I adopted several resolutions aimed at making my family&amp;#039;s school-day mornings more calm and cheery. Each night, I spent 10 minutes tidying up so I wouldn&amp;#039;t emerge into a supermessy apartment in the morning. I started going to bed earlier, to be better rested \u2014 and I started waking up earlier so I could organize myself before my family woke up. I started singing in the morning to put myself in a lighthearted mood.  Next:  You might tackle a different pattern in your days. How about lunch? Your last hour before bedtime? Your Saturday afternoon, your Sunday evening? Your routine when you&amp;#039;re feeling blue or lonely? By identifying these patterns and acknowledging their power to shape our lives, we&amp;#039;re better able to spot happiness-boosting ways to change them. I remember another conversation, with a friend who lives outside Washington, DC. &amp;quot;I had a terrible, terrible commute,&amp;quot; she sighed. &amp;quot;Every day, twice a day, it left me drained and agitated. I just couldn&amp;#039;t get used to it.&amp;quot; This made sense, I thought. Happiness experts say that a bad commute is a very serious happiness challenge, and one that people don&amp;#039;t adapt to. Especially if it&amp;#039;s a commute that involves a lot of traffic. &amp;quot;I was ready to think about quitting my job, it was so bad. But then I asked myself, Is there anything I could do to make this commute less boring and infuriating? And then it occurred to me: audiobooks! I got a mystery audiobook from the library, and just that one little thing changed my life.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Did it really make a big difference?&amp;quot; I wondered. &amp;quot;Absolutely! I used to hate every minute in the car, and since I started listening to audiobooks I&amp;#039;ve even caught myself sitting in the driveway to listen for a few extra minutes before I get out. It makes an enormous difference in the quality of my day.&amp;quot; Lately, I&amp;#039;ve been thinking more about evening routines. I have a very specific routine with each of my daughters; rightly, I think, a lot of parenting advice focuses on bedtime, and this part of the day has always been important in our family. With my 6-year-old daughter, I start by sitting in a rocking chair. With her in my lap, I read aloud for a while; then we turn off the light and rock in the dark before I tuck her into bed. She tries to drag it out as much as possible, of course, but that&amp;#039;s the pattern. With my 12-year-old daughter, I lie in bed with her for 10 or 15 minutes after she turns out her light. We used to play games we&amp;#039;d made up through the years, like &amp;quot;Little Sister&amp;quot; or &amp;quot;The Video Game,&amp;quot; but now we just talk about her day. These are good patterns: calm, loving, predictable, enjoyable. But I recently realized that I don&amp;#039;t have a satisfying end-of-day routine with my husband. Once the girls are in bed, he and I drift around the apartment. &amp;quot;What are you going to do?&amp;quot; we ask each other. Sometimes we watch recorded TV shows together (lately, The Wire); sometimes one of us talks on the phone; he usually eats some ice cream; one or both of us catch up on e-mail for a while; we always end up reading in bed together, and we never miss a good-night kiss. It&amp;#039;s cozy, but it&amp;#039;s a very loose, unstructured pattern, unlike the specific patterns I deliberately created with my daughters. I want to start a routine with him \u2014 but what exactly should it be? I still haven&amp;#039;t figured this out. However, I know it can&amp;#039;t involve: a) reminders about unfinished tasks; b) conversations about logistics; or c) the kind of remark I tend to make that is prefaced with the words &amp;quot;For your information....&amp;quot; These are not helpful ways to end the day! And just as I have daily routines, I have weekly routines, holiday routines, and yearly routines. I ask myself, Do they boost my happiness? When I take the time to reflect on the patterns of my life, about the routines that shape my existence, I often find manageable, practical ways to increase my happiness by making these patterns more pleasant \u2014 or at least less unpleasant. How about you? Have you recognized patterns or routines in a way that&amp;#039;s helped you find methods to make your life happier? E-mail me at gretchen@goodhousekeeping.com. Happiness Thought for April &amp;quot;The key is not to prioritize what&amp;#039;s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.&amp;quot; \u2014Stephen Covey "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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