Five Reasons to Keep a Daily Routine
A daily routine is more important now than ever.
A daily routine is more important now thanĀ ever.
As I write this, we are four months into a declared once-in-a-century pandemic crisis. Our regular lives have been upended, and there is really no certain end date. The 1918 flu pandemic lasted two full years, until 1920. BC (āBefore COVIDā), most of us had a regular routine, usually set by our work schedule or our childrenās school schedules. Whatever our daily routines were before, they are certainly changing because almost everything we did before has changed.
Now that many people who previously worked in an office setting, as well as students who were in school every weekday, are now home-based in one way or another, developing, implementing, and sticking with a new daily routine is more important than ever.
Many freelancers and self-employed independent contractors had more flexible schedules, but most still pretty much stuck to a fixed daily routine.
A habit is an activity or practice that is developed over time and performed regularly. Brushing your teeth at least three times a day is a habit. Going to bed and waking up at specific times are habits. Exercising every day is a habit. A routine is essentially a collection of habits.
A daily personal and professional routine made up of habits gives you structure and a functioning system as a foundation for everything you do. These new changes give you and me new reasons to check our daily routines to see if they need to be adjusted. I am doing that now that both my husband and I are working from our separate home offices for the foreseeable future.
Five Reasons Why a Daily Routine is Important
A daily routine helps you to better manage your time from morning to evening, at home, and at work. With a routine, you follow a specific set of activities for every part of your day. Many of these activities are habits that are repeated so often they become a part of your life and you can easily allocate the proper amount of time to each activity. When you have a specific, albeit flexible plan for every day, week, and month, you can more easily complete your goals and keep your life more orderly.
A daily routine helps you with self-discipline. Every day there are certain things you must do so that you have the time and resources to do the things you want to do. When your regular schedule has been upended or you donāt really have a regular schedule at all, a daily routine will help you complete those habits that are important to help you get and stay organized and actually get things done. Even when I am on vacation, I set up a routine for each day, or I may end up spending all day in bed in the hotel room!
A daily routine will help you focus and ignore and even eliminate time-sucking distractions. With constant cell phone notifications, scores of emails per day, social media to keep up with, people wanting to talk to you about something, home, family, kids, and pets to take care of, it is so easy to get distracted from you had planned to do for the day. But if you work hard to have a daily routine that sets aside certain times of the day for certain activities, it will be easier to stay focused (not counting emergencies, of course).
A daily routine will help you to keep a better work-life balance. In my experience, āwork-lifeā balance means different things to different people, and even the ābalanceā may change on different days, especially when working from home. Especially if you are fortunate enough to be able to more or less set your own schedule, you can be more effective if you can set that schedule around a regular daily routine.
A daily routine actually helps you to learn more about yourself! As you develop and implement your daily routine by forming new habits, you learn what works and what doesnāt work. Making and keeping a daily routine is actually always a work-in-progress because something (or many things) in your life is always changing, yet you can always have a way to manage those things over which you have control.
My DailyĀ Routine
Even though I have been a full-time self-employed solopreneur since 2008, and I can pretty much set my own schedule, I have found out that having a daily routine, even on weekends, helps me to get so much more done.
Contrary to the clock photo, I am naturally a morning person, and if I donāt wake up until 7 am, I feel that Iāve missed half of the morning! One of the things I really struggle with is getting up and going right to my computer. On the days I do that, I am like the proverbial freelancer who is still in her PJs at 11 am.
My daily routine actually starts with my evening routine. Remember when we were children and our parents made us take a bath, brush our teeth, and lay out our clothes, lunch, and books and supplies for the next day? The same principle applies now that we are adulting. I find that when I get ready for the next day the night before, the next day actually flows better. Did you ever think about how long it takes to decide what to wear and what to eat for the day? Making those preparations the night before makes the next day so much easier.
As I fight to stay away from my computer the first thing in the morning (which includes not checking Facebook or emails from my phone), I work hard to keep my morning routine. It starts by making my bed, even before I brush my teeth. If I donāt make my bed right away, it usually doesnāt get made. When the bed is made, the whole room just looks neater.
Next, I brush my teeth, drink eight ounces of water, have a cup of Bullet Proofā¢ coffee, put on my workout clothes, and do my morning 90-minute yoga practice. Again, if I talk myself out of my morning practice, promising myself that Iāll do it later in the day, the daily workout almost never gets done. Then, as hard as it is to stay away from my computer and my phone, after my workout, I shower, dress, eat breakfast, and then go to my desk.
Speaking of starting the workday, I have another āthe day beforeā part of my daily routine: to plan my day for tomorrow before I close the office for the current day. This part of my daily routine does two things: 1) it saves a lot of time in the morning because my day is already planned, and 2) it helps me sleep because thoughts of āWhat is supposed to happen tomorrow?ā is not nagging my brain when Iām trying to sleep.
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During my work week, I have times set aside for client appointments and working on client projects, and time set aside for my own writing and other business tasks and activities. I live by my Google calendar and use Trello to manage my personal and business projects. Having everything written out and pre-planned actually helps me to keep my daily routine, get things done, and set my own schedule around my routine.
About Me
I am a native of Detroit, Michigan, USA, a wife, mother, grandmother, solopreneur, and homeowner. I would love for you to follow me on my personal Facebook and on my personal Instagram. Any opinions expressed in this publication are my own.
I invite you to read the stories in my other publications: Your Business Your Brand Creatively and Detroit Ink Publishing.