Lessons from brushing my teeth
An essay…
This essay went through a lot of edits and revisions. Initially I thought this essay was about productivity. But as the week went on, I realized it was about mundane habits. In this particular instance, I am referring to brushing our teeth… a simple enough activity in which most of the world partakes. Yet, outside the dentist and the ads for a specific toothpaste promising the most beautiful white smile, we rarely talk about it or consider the lessons this mundane and common habit teaches us.
We tend to obsess with productivity, goals, routines, and accomplishments. The big things. We read articles and books about reaching our potential. Now, social media offers us a gloss of sublimity to our mundane life. I don’t know about you, but I look with envy the posts of people who wake up at a sinful hour in the morning. They do their time alone with a cup of coffee, a nice journal, maybe even a Lamy fountain pen, and an Instagram worthy breakfast. In contrast, my life does not start before 10:00 am or later. Not because I do not want to have an early morning routine. I do. But my joints and muscles beg, no, actually, they scream to differ and limit my stamina. It is okay. I have accepted my limitations. But, every so often I still feel that little twinkle of envy.
While I do believe we should be productive and occupied, I also believe we glamorize and romanticize productivity and being busy. In reality, we do many small and mundane things in our lives that are productive. We do them without a second thought and never once think of them as an accomplishment. Let’s look at teeth brushing. We brush our teeth daily twice a day. But, no one, at least that I know of, talks about brushing their teeth as THE accomplishment on the day. No one talks about experiencing a romantic feeling, a sense of ecstasy, and a sense of glamour while brushing their teeth. Teeth brushing does not even raise to the level of a line in our to-do lists.
Yet, when we wake up, —depending on which teeth brushing camp we subscribe to (whether it is before or after breakfast)—we walk to the sink, put the toothpaste on the brush, and brush we do. Unless you are a dentist, there is really not much of a meta analysis about brushing our teeth and no books to discuss it. We simply brush our teeth. Some of us spend the dutiful two minutes. Some of us might want to spend the two minutes but skip some of that. Some of us might like the toothpaste a little too much and spend some more seconds savoring that. I love the paste they put on my teeth at the dentist. They say not to savor it but I like it.
Maybe the teeth brushing analogy comes easy to me because I had about five gum surgeries in my twenties. These surgeries were compliments of my wisdom teeth wreaking havoc in the bones of my jaw. Or maybe it is because my mom dutifully taught us that teeth brushing was the best way to avoid dentures, which she had to have at a young age. Or maybe it is because I do see teeth brushing as the most mundane habit we can possibly practice.
The banality of teeth brushing notwithstanding, brushing our teeth is probably one of the simplest and most productive activities in our day. No one would disagree that it indispensable to our oral health.
Whenever we have a big project we ponder, we procrastinate, and we also overthink it. We talk about the muse or inspiration waking us up or having that aha moment. On the other hand, when we brush our teeth we never wait for the muse or the inspiration to come. Neither we ponder, procrastinate, or overthink it. Not to steal the Nike’s motto, but we simply do it.
When I was writing my book, Sketching as Design Thinking, I put aside time to work on it. I looked into my teeth brushing approach a lot for help. I would sit down to write almost every day for a block of time—whether that was for researching, reading, or typing. I sat. I worked. I would repeat. Every weekend there was a reset. And every Monday, there was also another reset. I would sit. I would work. I would repeat.
With that my friends, let’s brush our teeth maybe this time considering that approaching life this way would make some things less difficult than they already are.
With much love,
Alma