The Microsoft Outlook outage the last 24 hours (and counting) has given me more time. I’d like to say I’m grateful, but I’m mostly waiting for a return of normal that I may do the things I know I need to do. This is the opposite of amor fati, I know, but it’s the curse of a productive mindset. Do or do not, there is no try, as that curmudgeonly character Yoda once put it. Productivity addiction offers its own path to curmudgeonliness.

Routine isn’t always apparent until something comes along to disrupt that routine. Maybe it’s a power outage or an over-dependence on a technology company’s product not doing what it’s supposed to do when you need it doing that very thing, but a wake up call is sometimes needed to shake our belief tree. We believe we’re resilient until our routine is disrupted. But perhaps resilience isn’t the right trait to aspire to:

“Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better.”
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Antifragile

We are each of us fragile beings, because we all will one day die. Memento mori. But that fact doesn’t mean we need to simply give up on living. It means we need to build more adaptivity into our lives. To pivot when the way ahead is blocked by circumstances out of our control. To make subtle behavior changes that move us from a downward trend in mental or physical fitness to an upward trend, that we may kick poor health further down the curb for as long as possible.

I’m writing again after taking a few days off. I’m not at all concerned about keeping the streak alive anymore. That train has left the station. Now I simply write when I have something to say (or feel like there’s something percolating within looking for a place to go). This blog post won’t change the world, bring Microsoft back online or stop the rain from tapping on the window pane, but it has jump-started the mind when the mind simply wanted to respond to emails. Whoever said email was productive anyway?

If being antifragile is adaptively overcoming a disruption, then focusing on the disruption of a routine or expected outcome makes us weaker than we might otherwise be in the moment. Embrace the pivot, friend, and find a way around the current problem. The real question is, what is the desired outcome? Find a new way to reach it. The alternative is more of the same, and that’s no way to live this day.