Stability Through Ritual
Inspired by on Lenny's Podcast
When everything feels chaotic with your toddler, rituals aren't constraints - they're anchors.
Claire Hughes Johnson built Stripe's operating system through years of hyper-growth. Her insight? When everything feels chaotic - and it always does - stability comes from ritual and common practices.
Parenting a toddler is the ultimate high-growth environment. Everything changes constantly. New abilities emerge weekly. Sleep patterns shift. Moods are unpredictable. You're in permanent chaos mode.
Claire's answer: don't add more complexity. Add simple rituals that everyone can hold onto.
Bedtime routine. Morning routine. The song you sing before meals. The way you say goodbye at daycare. These aren't rigid rules - they're stabilizing structures. They create predictability when nothing else is predictable.
When your kid is spinning out of control at the end of a hard day, rituals are the touchstone. 'Okay, what comes next? Bath. Then books. Then songs.' They know what's coming. You know what's coming. The ritual itself is calming.
Claire warns against constantly reinventing processes. The same applies to parenting. Don't keep changing the bedtime routine because this new one might be better. Do few things consistently and well.
Rituals aren't just for your kid. They're for you too. In the chaos, they're the thing you can hold onto.
PM Theme: Building systems and processes
Parenting Theme: Creating structure and routines
“Where stability comes from is in ritual and in common practices that you share... I think one of the things that happened is you picture yourself sort of spinning out of control. You think, how do I come back to this is the order I do things, this is how I get decisions made.”Claire Hughes Johnson · 00:44:52
“I would say do very few things consistently and try to do them well... Don't keep throwing out new things you heard that other companies do.”Claire Hughes Johnson · 00:50:16
