How to use the power of routines
posted in Achieving Goals |
One of the most powerful tools that you can create and use in your life, to assure that you are moving towards your goals, are routines. We all have routines for many of the mundane things in our lives. We probably have a regular set of steps we take to get ourselves ready in the morning or to pay our bills or clean the house. These aren’t things we’re crazy about doing, but having the routine helps us to remember to wash our hair and take the garbage out. For example, when I’m in my glazed over mode in the shower, I know that if I’m washing my back that I’ve already washed my face and my hair, because they are first in the routine. I don’t have to think of much, which is good since I’m often pretty out of it when trying to shower. If I had to think about it every day, that would add a lot of extra work to my life. Creating routines for as many activities as possible, removes them from your thinking and creative mind. You can get them done without exercising your brain. In addition, those things get done!
Create routines to help you accomplish as many of your regular tasks as possible. Particularly, work on routines for the tasks that you don’t enjoy very much. I don’t really like planning dinners. I don’t mind cooking them so much, but I hate trying to think up what to eat every night. I can create a calendar with meals planned for each night. That way I can both shop for food more efficiently and not have to think every night. Sometimes I get lazy, though, and don’t do the planning so I have to spend more time every night thinking. I need to find a place in my routine to add the task of planning dinners. If it becomes regular and second nature, it will get done. In addition, I used to choose my clothes for work every evening, another chore that I hate. I finally decided to plan out my whole week of clothes, pull them out of the drawers, and pile them in a basket every Sunday. It took about the same amount of energy that each night took me, but once it was done once, it was over for the week.
What regular things need to be done in your household that you don’t want to do? There should be plenty of activities like that. List the activities and start seeing how you can break them down into smaller pieces. When I was responsible for the laundry, I would put a load in the washer every morning, move it to the dryer when I got home from work in the afternoon, and fold it at night. That way I would always have all the laundry done and I rarely noticed doing it. If you think of an onerous task that you can’t think of how to break down, start searching the Internet for sites that give helpful household hints (such as: Discover Organization, Blog about Helpful Household Hints, Fly Lady).
The idea is to take a large, uninteresting or undesirable activity and break them down into pieces so small that you can easily slip them into your routine without causing you too much misery. Once you’ve broken down the task, see where you can fit the pieces into your daily routine. It’s easier to convince yourself to just throw one load of laundry into the washer instead of thinking of “doing laundry.”
If you have many good routines, think of what other activities could be put into more routines. If you have few routines, start developing as many as you can. You don’t need to start them all at once, just create them to use at a later time. Start using your routines regularly. If you need to write down the steps and post them on your refrigerator, do that. I used to have my afternoon schedule posted on the refrigerator so that I would get all parts done even though I was worn out from work. Your routines become the backbone of your day, your week, your life. Good routines, that are used consistently, get things done.
Waiting for the inspiration to want to do these things will rarely afford you the productivity you need to achieve your goals. The nature of things that are put into routines is that they’re not things you really want to do. Therefore, waiting until you want to do it, won’t get as much done. Stay aware that these are things that you don’t necessarily want to do and therefore pushing yourself to do what needs to be done in routines is what will help you get ahead.
If you have difficulty initiating routines, tell me what those difficulties are in the comments. I’m interested in the obstacles people run into when trying to create or follow routines.
