Sneak Up On Your Dreams

My life has changed significantly since I quit my day job and am working from home now.  Many of my old routines aren’t of any use and I haven’t quite figured out new ones.  One problem is that summer is a different routine than the school year.  Next week is the last week of summer and then school starts, so whatever I figure out now will be useless in a week.

What I know, though, is that routines are important for getting things done and accomplishing goals.  Setting up routines that work allow you to complete many mundane or undesirable tasks without taking the time or energy to think about them.  They free up your resources to spend time doing what you want and they move you forward to getting the larger goals you’re working for.

I’m looking to create routines that help me get my mandatory work done and then small amounts of my work that’s solely to achieve a goal that I want.  That way, I’m able to accomplish what needs to be done now while still putting some effort into a far away goal that has no requirements at the moment.

Most people have many required task in their day. They need to do whatever they do to earn money and take care of themselves and their families and so on.  People usually feel that this leaves very little time for doing things that could lead to achieving their larger goals.  This is especially true when the tasks required to achieve bigger goals are undesirable and not fun.  The way to deal with this is to create routines that break these activities into small tasks that get wrapped up into a routine and then are just done regularly.  The less time and energy a person has available for these goal-achieving tasks, the smaller they can make those tasks. As long as they exist and are in a routine that is being done regularly, you’ll still be moving towards your goal.

For people who have a difficult time with routines, creating good, useful routines may take more time and energy, but will provide a thinking-free way of getting the things done to get you where you want to go. Break your goals down into small tasks and find other routines in your day where you can slip in these tasks.  The starting place is to have routines for many things that you do.

Step one: Consider what you want a routine for.  Do you want a routine for paying your bills or organizing your papers, completing your work or getting the kids off to school on time?  What are you doing regularly that could be made more automatic with a good routine?

Step two: Write down everything you want or need to do in a list format.  Don’t worry about what is more important than anything else, just try to brainstorm every single piece of activity or task that needs to be completed.  For example, for getting the kids off to school you need to make sure they’re dressed, have shoes on, back packs, lunches or lunch money, breakfast, homework, gym clothes, permission slips/notes, outer wear, and whatever else your child needs.  Add whatever else your family needs to the list.  Some of the parts of the routine may need routines of their own. I have a routine for how to get everything into the backpack that needs to be there, etc.

Step three: What needs to be done first, second, third, etc.  What can be done the day before?  For example, the backpack shouldn’t be put by the door until it is full of everything it needs.

Step four: Write the routine down in order.  I used to be pretty befuddled in the afternoons after work.  I just couldn’t figure out which onerous task I needed to do when.  I just put up a list of what needed to be done every afternoon on the refrigerator. It’s not like I didn’t know I needed to make lunches and pack back packs, etc, it was just that it was too much work to think up the routine every day.  After a while I didn’t need to look at the list.

Step five: Try the routine a few times and see what may need to be adjusted.  If something is not getting done in the right order, change it, if you can get someone else to do it, do that.  If there’s something you particularly don’t like to do, either put it first or put it before something you much prefer to do.  Find a place in your daily routines to put one of your goal-oriented tasks.  Add it in where you already have things that need to be done. That assures that it gets done as well.

Step six: Learn and follow your routine.  Let your routine be your brain for as many tasks as possible.  The key to achieving big goals is to break them into small tasks and then put those tasks into a routine that you ultimately do without even thinking.  It’s a process. In the beginning will take a great deal of thinking and planning, but putting together routines that involve your goal-oriented tasks will make them automatic.  Once those small tasks, that you don’t really want to do, are automatic and therefore get done, little by little, you will be able to build towards your ultimate goal.

Looking back to the story about the college paper that I tried to write only when I felt like it, there was a second lesson. The second lesson was the need to ask questions and get help when my frustration level reached a certain point.

When I was young, I thought it was a sign of a grown-up to not need any help. I was reluctant to ask for help and show how ignorant I was. I was also unsure that anyone knew how to help me. As I got older, I found out that there were many resources in the world and that if I asked the right questions, in the right way I could almost always get very good help. I started to realize that life was far easier than I had made it out to be as a child.

As an example, about three years ago I applied for and was subsequently invited to try to get hired as an instructor at an online college. The first step to being hired was to take a class on how to teach at the college. I did everything that the course required and thought I was doing fine. Since I had learned, though, to ask questions, I e-mailed the instructor to confirm that I was doing everything right. The instructor told me that I had to increase my posts by four times! Another person going for the same job, with a higher degree than mine, wasn’t hired because she didn’t post enough. I was hired because I asked the question. It is, in fact, the job that is now supporting me while I work on developing my writing career.

Remember to ask more questions than you think you need to.