Everyday life, daily life or routine life comprises the ways in which people typically act, think, and feel on a daily basis. Everyday life may be described as mundane, routine, natural, habitual, or normal. Human

diurnality Diurnality is a form of plant and ethology, animal behavior characterized by activity during daytime, with a period of sleeping or other inactivity at night. The common adjective used for daytime activity is "diurnal". The timing of activity by a ...

means most people sleep at least part of the night and are active in daytime. Most eat two or three meals in a day. Working time (apart from shift work) mostly involves a daily schedule, beginning in the morning. This produces the daily

rush hour A rush hour (American English, British English) or peak hour (Australian English) is a part of the day during which traffic congestion on roads and crowding on public transport is at its highest. Normally, this happens twice every weekday: on ...

s experienced by many millions, and the drive time focused on by radio broadcasters. Evening is often leisure time. Bathing every day is a custom for many. Beyond these broad similarities, lifestyles vary and different people spend their days differently. For example, nomadic life differs from sedentism, and among the sedentary, urban people live differently from rural folk. Differences in the lives of the rich and the

poor Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little

income< ...

, or between

laborer A laborer (or labourer) is a person who works in manual labor types in the construction industry workforce. Laborers are in a working class of wage-earners in which their only possession of significant material value is their labor. Industries e ...

s and intellectuals, may go beyond their working hours.

Children A child ( : children) is a human being between the stages of birth and puberty, or between the developmental period of infancy and puberty. The legal definition of ''child'' generally refers to a minor, otherwise known as a person younger ...

and adults also vary in what they do each day.

Sociological perspectives

Everyday life is a key concept in

cultural studies Cultural studies is an interdisciplinary field that examines the political dynamics of contemporary culture (including popular culture) and its historical foundations. Cultural studies researchers generally investigate how cultural practices re ...

and is a specialized subject in the field of sociology. Some argue that, motivated by capitalism and industrialism's degrading effects on human existence and perception, writers and artists of the 19th century turned more towards self-reflection and the portrayal of everyday life represented in their writings and art to a noticeably greater degree than in past works, for example

Renaissance literature Renaissance literature refers to European literature which was influenced by the intellectual and cultural tendencies associated with the Renaissance. The literature of the Renaissance was written within the general movement of the Renaissance, ...

's interest in

hagiography A hagiography (; ) is a biography of a saint or an ecclesiastical leader, as well as, by extension, an adulatory and idealized biography of a founder, saint, monk, nun or icon in any of the world's religions. Early Christian hagiographies migh ...

and politics. Other theorists dispute this argument based on a long history of writings about daily life which can be seen in works from Ancient Greece,

medieval Christianity Christianity in the Middle Ages covers the history of Christianity from the fall of the Western Roman Empire (). The end of the period is variously defined. Depending on the context, events such as the conquest of Constantinople by the Ottoman ...

and the Age of Enlightenment. In the study of everyday life gender has been an important factor in its conceptions. Some theorists regard women as the quintessential representatives and victims of everyday life. The connotation of everyday life is often negative and is distinctively separated from exceptional moments by its lack of distinction and differentiation, ultimately defined as the essential, taken-for-granted continuum of mundane activity that outlines forays into more esoteric experiences. It is the non-negotiable reality that exists amongst all social groupings without discrimination and is an unavoidable basis for which all human endeavor exists. Much of everyday life is automatic in that it is driven by current environmental features as mediated by automatic

cognitive processing Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of Intellect, intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attentio ...

of those features, and without any mediation by conscious choice, according to social psychologist

John A. Bargh John A. Bargh (; born 1955) is a social psychologist currently working at Yale University, where he has formed the Automaticity in Cognition, Motivation, and Evaluation (ACME) Laboratory. Bargh's work focuses on automaticity and unconscious proce ...

. Daily life is also studied by sociologists to investigate how it is organised and given meaning. A sociological journal called the ''

Journal of Mundane Behavior The ''Journal of Mundane Behavior'' was a triannual peer-reviewed academic journal of sociology covering everyday behavior and experiences. It was published online with three issues a year. The journal's first issue came out in February 2000 and th ...

'', published 2000 - 2004, studied these everyday actions.

Leisure

Daily entertainment once consisted mainly of telling stories in the evening. This custom developed into the theatre of ancient Greece and other professional entertainments. Reading later became less a mysterious specialty of scholars, and more a common pleasure for people who could afford books. During the 20th century mass media became prevalent in rich countries, creating among other things a daily

prime time Prime time or the peak time is the block of broadcast programming taking place during the middle of the evening for a television show. It is mostly targeted towards adults (and sometimes families). It is used by the major television networks to ...

to consume

fiction Fiction is any creative work, chiefly any narrative work, portraying individuals, events, or places that are imaginary, or in ways that are imaginary. Fictional portrayals are thus inconsistent with history, fact, or plausibility. In a traditi ...

and other professionally produced works. Different media forms serve different purposes in different individuals' everyday lives—which give people the opportunities to make choices about what media form(s)—watching television, using the Internet, listening to the radio, or reading newspapers or magazines—most effectively help them to accomplish their tasks.Baym, N. (2010), ‘Making New Media Make Sense’ in Personal Connections in the Digital Age, Polity Press, Ch. 2. Many people have steadily increased their daily use of the Internet, over all other media forms.

Language

People's everyday lives are shaped through language and communication. They choose what to do with their time based on opinions and ideals formed through the

discourse Discourse is a generalization of the notion of a conversation to any form of communication. Discourse is a major topic in social theory, with work spanning fields such as sociology, anthropology, continental philosophy, and discourse analysis. ...

they are exposed to. Much of the dialogue people are subject to comes from the mass media, which is an important factor in what shapes

human experience The human condition is all of the characteristics and key events of human life, including birth, learning, emotion, aspiration, morality, conflict, and death. This is a very broad topic that has been and continues to be pondered and analyzed fr ...

. The media uses language to make an impact on one's everyday life, whether that be as small as helping to decide where to eat or as big as choosing a representative in government. To improve people's everyday life, Phaedra Pezzullo, professor in the Department of Communication and Culture at Indiana University Bloomington, says people should seek to understand the

rhetoric Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...

that so often and unnoticeably changes their lives. She writes that “...rhetoric enables us to make connections... It's about understanding how we engage with the world.”

Activities of daily living

'' Activities of daily living'' (ADL) is a term used in healthcare to refer to daily self care activities within an individual's place of residence, in outdoor environments, or both.

Health professional A health professional, healthcare professional, or healthcare worker (sometimes abbreviated HCW) is a provider of health care treatment and advice based on formal training and experience. The field includes those who work as a nurse, physician (suc ...

s routinely refer to the ability or inability to perform ADLs as a measurement of the functional status of a person, particularly in regard to people with

disabilities Disability is the experience of any condition that makes it more difficult for a person to do certain activities or have equitable access within a given society. Disabilities may be cognitive, developmental, intellectual, mental, physical, se ...

and the

elderly Old age refers to ages nearing or surpassing the life expectancy of human beings, and is thus the end of the human life cycle. Terms and euphemisms for people at this age include old people, the elderly (worldwide usage), OAPs (British usage ...

."Activities of Daily Living Evaluation." ''Encyclopedia of Nursing & Allied Health''. ed. Kristine Krapp. Gale Group, Inc., 2002. eNotes.com. 200
Enotes Nursing Encyclopedia
Accessed on: 11 October 2007 ADLs are defined as "the things we normally do...such as feeding ourselves, bathing, dressing, grooming, work, homemaking, and leisure."MedicineNet.com Medical Dictionary
/ref> The ability and the extent to which the elderly can perform these activities is at the focus of

gerontology Gerontology ( ) is the study of the social, cultural, psychological, cognitive, and biological aspects of aging. The word was coined by Ilya Ilyich Mechnikov in 1903, from the Greek , ''geron'', "old man" and , ''-logia'', "study of". The fie ...

and understandings of later life.Katz, Stephen
''Busy bodies: Activities, aging, and the management of everyday life''
- Journal of aging studies, Elsevier, 2000. p. 136.

References

Bibliography

* Wyer, Robert S.; Bargh, John A. (1997)
''The Automaticity of Everyday life''
Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.