How to follow a Routine?
Success is the product of daily habits — not once-in-a-lifetime transformations.
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
It is better to improve daily than doing tasks in random order. Why?
- You will be able to see the progress on a regular basis
- It will not come into your habit and eventually you may just lose interest.
- Help you do the task at hand instead of procrastinating about it because you will have something planned throughout the day. So you can’t afford to lose time.
I was trying to learn French for a really long time at a very random time. Eventually, I left it there. and never looked back
Until now I hope you got why routines are important!
So how to follow one
- Write to-do a night before or first thing in the morning.
It’s the way. Some of the days it’s irritating and it can be a huge pain but this is the beginning. I can assure you you won’t be able to follow the routine for long if you don’t write it somewhere and check at the end how much is completed.
2. Exercise and Meditate
Exercise makes you active throughout the day and meditation helps you focus better. You will be less stressed and sleep better.
I know Meditation!!!! 10 mins( to start with) with nothing but you and maybe some music counting breaths. It seems easy but just too hard at the same time. 2 mins will feel like 20. But it is important with the whole world so stressed out. It will take time(months) but please take 20 minutes out of your life for this. It helps me reduce anxiety.
3. Block your social media.
Hear me out. Instagram fuels me even now also. I post many things and sometimes scroll through the black hole of reels. It’s fun, addictive which is its intent only. But it is not helpful for you. It makes you feel miserable. I have put a stop of 30mins in my Instagram. In iOS, you can control it with screen time and for Android, there are so many apps (ActionDash, Stay focused).
Stop the notifications from Whatsapp, Instagram, or any other apps you drain your energy into (which was mostly used by me). What it does is stop you from checking your phone in the middle of an important task if some messages pop up.
Replace social media time with something else. For me, it was Sudoku.😂
4. Rest
You will be able to do all this only after you have a good night's sleep. Read a book at night. Sleep for at least 7 hours. I can’t function without that.
And choose a thing. Be a morning or a night person. If you can’t, choose morning. Well by morning I don’t mean 5 am. Try to wake up by 7 am.
This is my routine which is exactly the same all days with some extra sleeping time on weekends.
*BF: Breakfast
Routines would be repetitive. Heck, mine is the same for all days.
As you can see above I am not able to complete all my tasks. Sometimes it's 20%. Some days( Thank you, periods), it’s zero and my Insta Netflix screen time crosses 4–5 hours.
What I want to say is it’s okay if you can’t complete all your daily tasks. We are not robots. I am following this routine for the past 7–8 months. It took me 2 months to adapt and realize I won’t be able to complete all the tasks. I have completed only 3–4 times all the tasks.
Don’t beat yourself up. Improve day by day. Love yourself and try to complete as much as possible.
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