Finding Routine
9 Mar
One of the things I’ve been struggling with lately is a lack of routine. I wake up at a different time every morning, fumble through my morning, go to work, come home, and fumble through my evening. More often than not I forget to eat dinner. Who does that?
So starting on Monday, I’m instituting a routine. I’m doing a meal plan and grocery shopping on Sunday so I’m ready to go Monday.
I’m going to wake up at the same time every morning.
I’m going to do the same thing every morning – no more forgetting my phone, a lot more preparing my lunch to bring to the office. Then I’m going to leave for work at the same time every day.
When I get home, I’m going go through the same routine. Walk Teddy, fix dinner, feed Teddy, do my social media/TV watching thang, then go to bed at the same time every night.
I think having a routine, especially for bedtime, will help me a lot. I have trouble sleeping, but that’s probably due in part to the fact that I go to bed at a different time every night, and go through a different nighttime routine every night. I think it will also make me more productive in the evenings, instead of looking up from Twitter to realize it’s 10:30 and I haven’t gotten anything accomplished. Maybe I’ll even remember to eat dinner more often.
I love routine. I crave it. So why have I put off establishing one for myself? That changes next week.
Do you have a routine? Or do you wing it from day to day?
I have absolutely no routine, because, like you, my schedule is different every day. I don’t have a strict 8-5 job. My workplace is extended hours and weekends, so my schedule is all over the board. That was great when I was in college, but now it’s terribly annoying. I tried implementing a routine at the beginning of the year, but it didn’t stick. However, I probably need to try to put it back in motion. Even though my work schedule isn’t the same everyday, my idea was to still make my daily routine the same. Wake up at 6:00, go to bed at 10:00. Get ready for bed by 9:00, so that I can read before sleep at 9:30. It sounds like a great plan to me, it’s just getting myself to do it has become the problem. I hope you get much better results than I do.
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We shall see! I feel like even if I just wake up and go to sleep at the same time every day I’ll be doing much better.
Routinizing the little but important stuff has made a huge difference for me. I do my grocery shopping Sunday and when I get home I try to portion everything out for lunch for the week, cook any meat or veggies for lunch for the week, all at the same time. This makes it a breeze to throw lunch together in the AM. Another key for me is to plan triggers/chain reactions, like keeping my moisturizer right next to my toothbrush so it becomes automatic to do one thing right after another.
I also started using the phone app Routinely earlier this year, you put in your goals and how often you want to happen, and it can buzz at you to remind you at whatever time you want, and if you haven’t accomplished a daily goal in a few days it turns red. Mine is set to remind me to take my vitamins at 10am and exercise by 7pm. It is an unobtrusive way to keep me accountable.
I’ve heard great thinks about Routinely – I need to download that!