Rou­tin­isa­tion is usu­ally seen as deskilling, as ali­en­at­ing, as the oppos­ite of cre­ativ­ity (Braver­man, 1998; Leidner, 1993). Aus­trin and West (2005) sug­gest that the rou­tin­isa­tion of how casino staff manip­u­late cards acts as mech­an­ism for sur­veil­lance. Stand­ard­ising and con­trolling how staff hold their thumb and fin­gers lim­its the chances for them to cheat.

Routines are sup­posed to feel demean­ing, to des­troy our ima­gin­a­tions. I like routine, per­haps because whatever routines I have are not imposed by any­one else. In Ways of the Hand David Sud­now (1993) reflects on learn­ing to play jazz piano. The routine of prac­tice gives him a baseline from which being cre­at­ive becomes pos­sible. His fin­gers learn where they need to be to make cer­tain chord shapes, and that means they know where they need to go next to make cer­tain sounds. Unpre­dict­ab­il­ity — new sounds — relies on this know­ing. It’s a pro­cess that becomes un-thought, and once it is un-thought, Sud­now says cre­ativ­ity is possible.

Nick Dunn is a freel­ance shoe designer.He draws shoe after shoe after shoe, tiny vari­ations, maybe 50 at a time.Then he takes a few of the best and refines them. It’s someone else’s job to build a pro­to­type, to make them real. There is joy in see­ing the pro­to­type, sure, espe­cially as the trainer moves from the page into three-dimensionality, and Nick is fully engaged in the con­ver­sa­tions that make this hap­pen. But the biggest pleas­ure of his work is in the routine, the repe­ti­tion and the refine­ment of the sketches. Nick describes draw­ing as thera­peutic, occupy­ing a calm space bey­ond thought. Cre­ativ­ity needs the routine; cre­ativ­ity is in the routine; the routine per­mits flow. 

In the sketches, this flow is present in the pen­cil lines that out­line the shape of the trainer, and that mark the details. I didn’t expect from Nick’s descrip­tion that each idea comes in three sketches, show­ing the left side, back and top. Whilst he draws on flat, seem­ingly trans­lu­cent, paper, the three dimen­sional trainer that ends up on your foot is already in his ima­gin­a­tion. It’s not that routines end up with cre­ativ­ity; to say that would be to viciously mis­rep­res­ent the exper­i­ence of con­trolled, rou­tin­ised work such as that por­trayed in Pravda. It’s that cre­ativ­ity is not well-conceived when it’s seen as a product of free-floating inspir­a­tion pro­duced by a romantic­ally starving artist. It stems from prac­tice, skill and routine.

Ref­er­ences

1. Aus­trin, T and West, J (2005) ‘Skills and sur­veil­lance in casino gam­ing: work, con­sump­tion and reg­u­la­tion’. Work Employ­ment and Soci­ety. 19 (2) 305–326.
2. Braver­man, Harry. (1998) Labor and mono­poly cap­ital: the degrad­a­tion of work in the twen­ti­eth cen­tury. New York : Monthly Review Press.
3. Leidner, R. (1993) Fast Food, Fast Talk: Ser­vice Work and the Rou­tin­iz­a­tion of Every­day Life. Berke­ley, Los Angeles, Lon­don: Uni­ver­sity of Cali­for­nia Press.
4. Sud­now, D. (1993) Ways of the hand: the organ­iz­a­tion of impro­vised con­duct. Cam­bridge, Mass.: MIT Press.