Why we’re fascinated by other people’s routines

One of my quickest reads was Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration, and Get to Work a book that dives deep into how great minds of the past scheduled their days around work. Notable people he covered included Ludwig Van Beethoven, Maya Angelou, and Benjamin Franklin.

Imagine my excitement when I realized there was a second edition dedicated to looking at how women arranged their days with the pressures of children, household work, partners, and/or other things competing for their attention. Daily Rituals: Women at Work expanded its coverage of women to Virgnia Woolf, Frida Kahlo, Zadie Smith, Coco Chanel, and more.

There’s something fascinating about discovering the ordinary habits behind extraordinary work. A finished book or painting can feel mysterious. The person sitting down to make it, getting distracted, and trying again tomorrow feels much more familiar. To me, it was exciting and comforting to hear about these individuals’ daily walks, periods of illness or laziness that kept them from work, and their family obligations.

My feelings around these books made me wonder: What are we looking for when we read about someone else’s routine? And why are there so many freaking social media videos and blog posts about the “perfect morning” fueled with green juice and transcendental meditation?

Recent scientific research offers several possible answers. Most of these studies weren’t about morning-routine videos or artists’ schedules specifically, but they help explain our interest in other people’s lives and the hope that their habits might offer something useful for our own.

1. Curiosity: What does her everyday life actually look like?

Sometimes, we just want to know. ✋

Psychologist Britta Renner calls this social curiosity: an interest in how other people think, feel, and behave. In a study involving 312 participants, she developed a questionnaire that distinguished general interest in people from more indirect ways of gathering information about them. [1]

Later research by Freda-Marie Hartung and Renner found that social curiosity and gossip overlap but have different emphases. Social curiosity was more closely connected to learning about people and belonging; gossip was more strongly associated with entertainment. [2]

That gives us a useful way to understand the appeal of an ordinary detail. Learning when someone takes a break or where she writes can make a distant person feel more understandable.

Currey’s books offer plenty of those details. But Women at Work also explores the obligations and obstacles surrounding creative work, including the competing demands of family life. [3]

A routine becomes more revealing when we can see what it has to accommodate.

Perhaps part of the pleasure is discovering how differently a meaningful life can be arranged.

2. Possibility: Could I become a little more like the person I admire?

Other people’s routines can also make a desired future feel more concrete.

In their study Superstars and Me, psychologists Penelope Lockwood and Ziva Kunda found that outstanding role models could inspire people when their achievements felt relevant and attainable. When comparable success seemed unattainable, those comparisons could instead leave people feeling worse about themselves. [4]

A routine offers a possible bridge between admiration and action.

Writing a novel sounds enormous. Sitting down to write a paragraph after breakfast sounds imaginable.

That connection is my interpretation of the research, rather than something the study tested directly. But it helps explain why a small detail can feel so promising: it gives us something we could actually try.

There’s a catch, though. Knowing what a successful person does doesn’t tell us which actions caused her success.

Her schedule may depend on circumstances we cannot see—or cannot reproduce. A quiet morning might require flexible work, childcare, financial security, or someone else handling the household.

The useful question becomes: What principle could I borrow?

Perhaps she protects uninterrupted time. Perhaps she makes starting easier by preparing her materials beforehand. Those ideas can be adapted without adopting her entire life.

3. Order: Could my days feel less unpredictable?

There’s an appealing certainty to a sequence.

Wake up. Make coffee. Read. Walk. Begin.

Even on paper, it looks manageable.

Research suggests that anxiety and ritualized behavior are connected. In a 2015 experiment, Martin Lang and colleagues induced anxiety and used motion-tracking technology to study participants’ movements during a task. Anxiety increased the repetitiveness and rigidity of their movements. [5]

The finding needs careful interpretation. It showed that anxiety could increase ritualized behavior. It did not establish that those movements relieved anxiety, or that watching someone else’s routine makes us calmer.

Still, it raises an interesting possibility: when life feels uncertain, predictable actions may become especially appealing.

A routine gives us a sequence we can anticipate. It can also offer the comforting image of a day that begins according to our intentions.

For anyone whose mornings involve children, caregiving, unpredictable work, or interrupted sleep, that image may be particularly compelling. That is a plausible explanation—not a proven conclusion about who watches routine content.

And it leaves an important practical question: What kind of order would actually support your circumstances?

It might be a dependable place for your keys, ten minutes to plan tomorrow, or a familiar transition between work and home. Order can be small enough to survive an ordinary day.

4. Ease: Could a useful action become less effortful?

Here, the evidence becomes more directly practical.

In two diary studies, Wendy Wood and colleagues asked participants to report their activities, thoughts, and feelings throughout the day. During habitual activities, people’s thoughts were more likely to wander away from what they were doing; less habitual activities required more attention to the action itself. [6]

That helps explain one real attraction of routine: a useful behavior may eventually require less conscious management.

In another study, Phillippa Lally and colleagues followed volunteers who chose a behavior to repeat in a consistent context for twelve weeks. Repetition was associated with increasing automaticity, although the pace varied substantially. Missing one opportunity did not materially disrupt the process. [7]

There is also evidence for making a specific plan. A meta-analysis by Peter Gollwitzer and Paschal Sheeran, covering 94 independent tests, found that implementation intentions—plans specifying when, where, or under what circumstances to act—improved goal attainment on average. [8]

For example:

After I make my afternoon tea, I’ll read two pages.

That is more specific than “I should read more.” It gives an existing moment a small action to cue.

An if–then plan and an established habit aren’t the same thing. But both point toward something useful: we can make an action easier to begin by deciding where it belongs.

What is worth borrowing?

I can enjoy someone else’s routine without treating it as an assignment.

Sometimes, the reward is simply learning how another person lived. Sometimes, there is an idea worth testing.

The distinction I want to keep in mind is this: Does this routine offer something that would support my life, or does it mainly make me admire someone else’s?

Both can be enjoyable. Only one needs to go on tomorrow’s schedule.

What’s one small thing you’ve borrowed from another person’s routine that actually helped? Hit reply. I’d love to hear.

With love,Jacqueline

Books mentioned

• Daily Rituals: How Great Minds Make Time, Find Inspiration, and Get to Work, by Mason Currey.
• Daily Rituals: Women at Work, by Mason Currey. The linked edition is an audiobook.

Research and further reading

[1] Renner, B. (2006). Curiosity about people: The development of a social curiosity measure in adults. Journal of Personality Assessment. Read the abstract.

[2] Hartung, F.-M., & Renner, B. (2013). Social curiosity and gossip: Related but different drives of social functioning. PLOS ONE. Read the study.

[3] Currey, M. (2019). Daily Rituals: Women at Work. Publisher’s description. The books offer biographical accounts, rather than experiments establishing which routines cause creative success.

[4] Lockwood, P., & Kunda, Z. (1997). Superstars and me: Predicting the impact of role models on the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. View the paper.

[5] Lang, M., et al. (2015). Effects of anxiety on spontaneous ritualized behavior. Current Biology. Read the abstract.

[6] Wood, W., Quinn, J. M., & Kashy, D. A. (2002). Habits in everyday life: Thought, emotion, and action. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Read the abstract.

[7] Lally, P., et al. (2010). How are habits formed: Modelling habit formation in the real world. European Journal of Social Psychology. View the study.

[8] Gollwitzer, P. M., & Sheeran, P. (2006). Implementation intentions and goal achievement: A meta-analysis of effects and processes. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. View the research. Effects varied across the studies; planning is helpful on average, rather than a guarantee of follow-through.