Routines: A Gift Or A Curse?
Get up at 4 am, do 300 push-ups whilst reading ‘Awaken the Giant Within’ by Tony Robbins, topped off with an immediate Michelin star breakfast you managed to make in only 10 minutes. It’s now 4:30 am and you are ready to kickstart your day!!!
Sound familiar? Didn’t think so. Getting into a concrete daily routine can be one of the most powerful skills to have but it always seems to be out of reach. The world we live in has popularised routines to the point where they are simply unattainable and only set people up for disappointment. Today, I want to talk to you about the benefits of an attainable routine and ways you can begin building one.
The Benefits Of Routines:
Routines can be extremely beneficial for both the mind and body. By adding routines such as a sleep schedule and putting more time aside to cook slightly healthier meals can have a lasting impact on your daily life.
Having trouble with being productive? The gift of routines allows you to make the most of your time by giving yourself clear goals to complete ensuring real work is done rather than a spontaneous spark of productivity three days down the line.
Routines also help your mental health. By making a routine, you become your own secretary in the sense that your brain will begin to remind you what needs to get done and when you are going to do it. When I am having a bad day, the saviour of a routine gives me less time to overthink things and means I spend more time living life rather than spending time in my head.
Can Routines Be A Curse?
It’s easy to say that tomorrow you’ll get up and have every minute of your life planned. But as I found, time after time I would miss a task leading to me writing off a whole day and getting nothing done. Today could have easily been one of those days. I woke up late, didn’t get to the gym on time and missed the slot I was meant to be writing this blog. But by reading this, you can see that with a realistic and flexible routine, you can still get tasks done.
A routine must allow for inconsistencies that occur in a day, be it your car broke down or you’re not feeling 100%. Learning the ability to adapt to changing environments is such an important skill which can even be learnt when we are trying to minimise them.
The fact that you have already taken a step to begin building a routine is amazing and by simply doing one task is better than doing nothing.
Here we can see that if you go into this with the wrong intent, you will only set yourself up for failure. By using a routine as a rough guide for your day to ensure you are meeting the basic requirements, you should begin to see some healthy changes in your daily life rather than being disappointed that you couldn’t stick to a routine that was inevitably designed to see your downfall.
The Action Plan
To achieve a healthy routine, you must know two things. Firstly what do you really want to get done in the day and are these tasks achievable? With these two objectives, you can tailor your day to your needs and over time begin to develop a healthier and more productive day.
I use an app called Structured which lets me split my day into rough chunks of what I want to achieve and gives gentle reminders of those tasks to ensure I stay on track.
I challenge you to try one routine, be it a morning, night or study routine, whatever you feel you would benefit the most from and wait to see how it can positively change your life for the better.