Is ‘being ordinary’ on anyone's New Year’s Resolution list?

How being ordinary might be one of our most overlooked and undervalued human attributes

The start of a new year is, predictably, a moment of resolution. We are encouraged to reflect on what we will improve, optimise, or become: healthier, more productive, more fulfilled. Progress is imagined as upward movement; we might start small, but with the help of these resolutions, we can live well and become a better version of ourselves.

But perhaps what does not get so much attention is how narrow this vision of the good life can be, leaving little room for continuity or maintenance, which means that standing still can be seen as stagnation. In other words, ordinariness is something to be overcome rather than sustained. And surely this does not stop at January resolutions but extends to work, politics, culture, and life more broadly, so that exceptionalism is sought out over good-enough and peak-performance over steadiness.

We will explore the case that ‘ordinariness’ is perhaps less a failure of ambition or imagination but is instead a structural requirement of contemporary life. Most systems do not depend on continuous improvement, but on repetition, maintenance, and the capacity to simply keep going. And that despite its importance, we do not credit it with the importance that it deserves.

This raises some hard questions for behavioural science, which has largely been built around moments of decision, interventions, and change. It has arguably paid much less attention to how people sustain effort and remain involved in systems that may rarely work as designed.

So in this article, we ask the question of whether being ordinary is perhaps a human strength that is one of our most important, yet overlooked and underexplored qualities.

The work of the ordinary

Ordinariness rarely features explicitly in political, cultural or organisational analysis, partly because it is designed not to. Instead, it operates as what we might call background infrastructure: the routines, habits, tacit judgements, shared ways of living that allow us to live without having to constantly explain or justify ourselves. In this sense, ordinariness provides our lives with a set of taken-for-granted conditions that enable coordination without friction.

This means that being ordinary is rarely considered a skill in its own right. But as we have seen, human life is sustained not through constant decision making and their associated justification, but through background continuity - having an unremarkable world that is stable enough to act within.

In addition, ordinariness is the way we regulate exposure to systems that demand we exceed our capacity. Political theorist Philip Pettit emphasises that freedom is not only exercised through voice or participation, but through the ability to remain unexceptional, to avoid being constantly mobilised, categorised, or intensified. From a systems perspective, this creates capacity, which is critical as what keeps systems viable over time is not continuous optimisation, but tolerance for managing shocks which comes through presence of slack, redundancy, and low-intensity functioning. Ordinariness is the human version of that principle, absorbing fluctuation, smoothing, allowing imperfect conditions without resulting in collapse.

From a psychological perspective, it has long been established that we do not need a perfectly optimised environment, but simply one that is “good enough” for early caregiving: predictable, unremarkable, and not demanding constant monitoring or response. Subsequent work has extended this insight beyond childhood, showing that when ordinary environments erode, whether in families, workplaces, or institutions, then anxiety tends to fill the gap, and our behaviour becomes more defensive, fragile, or performative.

From an organisational perspective, sociologist Richard Sennett suggests that institutions rely heavily on routine competence and the slow accumulation of practical judgement. These ordinary forms of capability enable the workplace to operate without constant oversight, thereby making long-term collaboration possible even in complex settings.

Taken together, these perspectives suggest that we can think more clearly about being ordinary: it is not simply a passive background but rather enables systems to function without constant strain. The implication here is that if it is eroded or made into something that is permanently visible, then the possibility of friction and difficulties multiples.

The illegitimacy of the ordinary

Despite the value of the ordinary, it often has little legitimacy. We frequently frame adequacy, restraint, and continuity not as virtues but as signs of a lack. Ordinariness is associated with a lack of ambition or adaptability in cultures that attach value to visibility and continual self-advancement. And this is not merely a cultural stylistic preference but can be a very moralising judgement – it is your ‘moral duty’ not to be ordinary.

We see this in the way that our organisational and policy language references qualities that exceed the ordinary: resilience, agility, passion, purpose, and high performance are presented as neutral virtues, but in fact, theorists suggest, they distinguish those who can sustain exceptional demands from those who cannot. This distinction is as much one of moral character rather than simple capacity: when we are organised around achievement and recognition, we start to treat limits and modest aspiration as signs of failure. And these are individual, personal failures as Barbara Ehrenreich showed in her analysis of the way calls for positivity and self-transformation subtly divert structural limitations into individual responsibility.

So, we have a contradiction. On the one hand, our institutions and society more generally rely on the assets of ordinariness, such as routine competence, informal coordination, care, and maintenance. On the other hand, it is devalued in language and expectations: it may be critical to our functioning, but it is often unacknowledged.

Janteloven and cross cultural differences

However, there do seem to be geographic differences in the extent to which we place value on the ordinary. In Scandinavia, the concept of Janteloven is a social code specific to the Nordic region, emphasising collective accomplishments and well-being, and disdaining focus on individual achievements. The term comes from the work of Danish-Norwegian author Askel Sandemose in his 1933 book A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks (En Flyktning Krysser Sitt Spor).

In the book, Sandemoose tells the story of a fictional small Danish town, Jante, where residents are expected to subordinate their individuality to the group, something that Sandemoose argued can historically be found throughout Scandinavia.

An example of the way Danes have played with the term Janteloven is the Carlsberg campaign: “Probably the best beer in the world.” It’s a mixture of self-effacement and pride meant to showcase the best of Denmark, including Carlsberg beer, while simultaneously undercutting the compliments. Always ending with the undercut of “probably.”

This perhaps confirms that being ordinary is not something alien to our being – but in some societies at least it can often be under-recognised. However, there is also a case that this behaviour, defined by its background characteristics, is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain.

When the background won’t stay in the background

One of the defining characteristics of modern society is that of culture wars: often described as disputes over values or identity, we can see that it creates a direct conflict over the ordinary. Culture wars operate by making ordinary behaviours visible: how people speak, teach, care, joke, discipline, manage, consume, or remain silent is no longer unremarkable but is instead seen as a signal of allegiance or intent. Everything is required to mean something.

This is how symbolic power operates, less about imposing beliefs but more about imposing the requirement to justify. Which means that what once ‘went without saying’ is forced into view, so, for example, our ordinary shopping choices can begin to function as a form of expressive labour, signalling values, awareness, and responsibility, rather than simply meeting needs.

There is of course a case for saying that making the ordinary visible has had real gains. Everyday sexism, casual racism, exploitative labour practices, environmental harm, and taken-for-granted exclusions are sustained precisely because they are ordinary. Social theory has long recognised that power does not operate only through rupture or force, but through normalisation: practices become durable not because they are uncontested, but because they are repeated. What is repeated comes to feel inevitable; what feels inevitable is less likely to be questioned. Ordinariness lowers cognitive and moral alertness, encouraging continuity rather than interruption.

Feminist scholars have shown how asymmetric power relations shape what is deemed ordinary. The private, the domestic, and the taken-for-granted are not neutral spaces but historically structured by gender, dependency, and silence. Much of what appears ‘natural’ or ‘just how things are’ rests on unpaid, feminised labour: care, emotional regulation, social smoothing, endurance. So, where power is uneven, ordinariness can embed domination. From this perspective, the problem is not ordinariness itself, but rather it is unexamined ordinariness under conditions of unequal power that can be problematic.

Nevertheless, when everything ordinary involves moral signalling, then we can slide into permanent justification. Ordinary actions are no longer just open to reflection; they are continuously evaluated, anticipated, and pre-emptively defended. And these pressures are not evenly distributed. As Alva Gotby argues, if we demand people to constantly explain themselves, then this privileges those with time, energy, and linguistic confidence. This is what makes culture wars so exhausting: it is often less about resolving disagreement and more about escalating the baseline of what participation in everyday life requires of us.

The question then becomes how much exposure, explanation, and emotional labour anyone can reasonably sustain. When ordinary practices are repeatedly pulled into scrutiny, behaviour recalibrates. We typically do not make a coordinated refusal or a collective exit, but there is an adjustment – we might present but reduce the surplus effort, the extra hours, the additional care, that these systems rely on.

Seen against this backdrop, behaviours that are often described as disengagement begin to look different.

Opting out without leaving

Take quiet quitting, a term that was trending a couple of years ago. Commonly framed as a collapse in work ethic, we can instead understand it as a response to the moralisation of work. If employment increasingly demands not only competence, but enthusiasm, identification, and emotional availability, then we may find that while participation persists, its scope narrows. This means that tasks are completed, but additional commitment is withdrawn. Work is given a more ordinary status: bounded, means to an end, finite.

A similar pattern is evident in politics, with declining turnout, protest fatigue, and political disengagement often interpreted as a crisis for democracy. But these shifts can also be seen as responses to a form of politics organised around spectacle, outrage, and constant mobilisation. Given that we have limited capacity to remain in a permanent state of moral outrage, our participation becomes more ad-hoc and situational, based on capacity and context rather than by a standing sense of obligation

Digital life is another example, with reduced public posting, a preference for private group chats, and minimal digital traces, often framed as withdrawal. Yet recent analysis by Kyle Chayka describes a shift toward ‘posting zero,’ in which ordinary users no longer see an incentive in broadcasting their lives publicly. Social interaction does not disappear; it migrates into lower-visibility, more private, and more ordinary forms, such as direct messages and small-group chats.

And we can also see how shifts in consumption follow the same structure: repair and reuse are often seen as sustainability practices, but arguably they can also reflect disengagement from a system in which identity is expected to be continually expressed through the choices we make. As sociologist Eva Illouz has shown, consumption functions as a form of expressive labour rather than simple use or need. On this basis, reducing participation is a way of lowering demands on us and avoiding making a statement.

A wider intellectual shift: from exception to maintenance

Despite this somewhat gloomy analysis of the state of ‘ordinariness’, there is a huge body of work that supports its value. Across the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, a shift has taken place across the humanities and social sciences, turning away from models that privilege rupture, heroism, optimisation, and peak moments and instead leaning towards frameworks that emphasise the importance of maintenance, repair, and the ordinary conditions of continuity.

In the field of history, a twentieth-century shift away from event-centred narratives redirected attention toward long durations and routine practices, most notably through the rise of everyday history. What mattered was no longer only what changed the world, but what kept it going.

In sociology and anthropology, attention has increasingly shifted from norms as formal rules to norms as lived practice. Everyday living, tacit knowledge, and informal work has came into focus, with our social lives understood as something we actively sustain through routine action rather than simply imposed from above.

In feminist theory, this turn has probably been the sharpest. Care, emotional labour, domestic work, and endurance, long treated as private or pre-political, have been re-theorised as central to how societies reproduce themselves.

Across these areas, it seems that there is theorising to support the notion that the key challenges we have are less about how to produce change and more about how to sustain life under pressure.

So how well does behavioural science align with these wider themes? At first glance, it appears as if the discipline tends to focus on moments of activation: decisions, nudges, incentives, interventions. Ordinariness is perhaps what happens between decisions: how people manage disappointment and ambiguity and sustain effort in systems that rarely work as designed. Its effects are long-term, cumulative rather than immediate, perhaps not quite where our focus typically lies.

Psychologist Leidy Klotz offers some helpful evidence for why ordinariness, maintenance, and subtraction are so hard to legitimate as forms of improvement. Across a series of experiments reported in Science, Klotz and colleagues show that people typically fail to consider subtraction as a way of improving systems, even when it is objectively superior. Participants asked to improve Lego structures, written essays, policy scenarios, or organisational rules overwhelmingly added components rather than removing them, despite clear incentives to subtract.

Further, the subtraction was typically not rejected, but it was overlooked. So when participants were gently cued that removal was an option (“you can remove pieces at no cost”), rates of subtraction increased dramatically. This suggests that subtraction is not counter-normative so much as cognitively invisible. Adding feels like doing something; removing does not register as action unless attention is deliberately redirected.

This finding has direct implications for how ordinariness is treated in social and institutional life. Maintenance, simplification, and easing demands are behaviourally disadvantaged because, in some sense, they look like subtraction: they remove strain rather than add value signals. As a result, systems gravitate toward escalation of more rules, more reporting, more engagement, more justification and so on, even though these additions increase fatigue and thin participation. From this perspective, the erosion of ordinariness is not only cultural or moral, but behavioural. We lack the cognitive habits to see less as a legitimate mode of care, competence, or progress.

Seen this way, defending the ordinary requires more than a normative argument. It requires countering a systematic bias toward addition, a bias that quietly undermines sustainability, liveability, and endurance across work, public services, and everyday life.

Conclusions

The historian E. P. Thompson famously showed how everyday expectations form a moral economy: a shared sense of what is tolerable, fair, or decent in ordinary life. When these expectations are violated, resistance does not necessarily take the form of overt confrontation but as withdrawal and non-compliance. We necessarily stay inside systems of everyday life but adjust how much effort and visibility we share.

The work of Leidy Klotz shows how culturally attuned we are to making improvements by adding or enhancing rather than by stripping back and simplifying. This suggests that the challenge is not always to increase motivation or intensity, but to design and defend the ordinary and to design systems that do not require exceptional effort, constant vigilance, or moral performance to function.

And as we operate in ever more complex, difficult environments, we need ordinariness to absorb and manage challenges. Seen in this way, reclaiming the ordinary may well be the most important and radical act, as it sets out how a human life can be liveable.

Implications for Brands:

Ordinariness is a mode of trust, not invisibility: Brands that fit easily into everyday routines without attention, novelty, or engagement can be experienced as more dependable than those that continually signal distinctiveness.

Think less not more in customer experience: Rather than adding options, complexity, emotional resonance, people may in fact want smoother, more ‘ordinary’ interactions.

Treat opting out as information, not failure: Muted engagement may not be a sign of disengagement but as a signal to simplify.

Implications for Government and the Public Sector:

Don’t design as if capacity were unlimited: Many public systems can assume citizens can continually justify, or self-advocate, which excludes those living with constraint or care responsibilities. Designing for ordinariness means minimising the need to perform legitimacy.

Treat endurance as a warning signal, not consent: When people continue to comply with complex or strained systems, this is often read as proof they are tolerable. But ordinariness frequently conceals overload.

Prioritise background functioning over engagement: Legitimacy is built less through moments of participation than through systems that recede into everyday life. The goal is not constant engagement, but livability.