Getting down to business. Routine?

January 5, 2022 by mjskok

This morning I was on my Peloton as usual and the number one song for 2021 came on. The Business:

It made me think of the new year and how many people make resolutions. The question is how do you keep them and make them lifelong habits?

First of all I’ll tell you a story. I had a life threatening condition and as I got out of it, I  had to create some routines that brought me back to health. It wasn’t optional so it helped me focus on how to manage myself at a time when I was severely compromised.  I learned one simple thing you can easily try for yourself.  Routine.

Getting a daily routine is easy, just look at your day and figure out what you do repetitively. Then make a list of what you want to do and figure out how you can fit it into the 24 hours you have. Ok that’s where the challenge starts, a timeplan is vital as you can’t expand time. Things will always arise that you don’t expect and before you know it you can be off your routine. Drop things you don’t want / absolutely need to do and leave whitespace. Some things really are vital like Sleep. It’s the recovery and fuel for your day, don’t compromise it or things like it. Choose what you want for your health, mental and physical fitness and general well being first and the rest will be possible. Reading up on how to help my brain it was clear in even the most basic articles that a healthy brain requires exercise so I’ve prioritized it further in my routine.

Then if you want to get the rest of your routine down pat with some key things like exercise or developing a new skill like writing, my recommendation is simple. Measure it, track it and ensure you can see your progress. It turns out just like crossing things off our todo list, this simple approach really rewards us and reinforces our routine. And jot down how your time is spent and what takes you off track. Awareness of your time is key. I’ll share a separate post on how to deal with interruptions and keep focus. 

I’m a nerd so I track all that I do in Coda where it’s super easy for me to see my daily routine, check things off and even track it all in a linked Google Calendar. But even if you’re just use paper and pencil you can track some basics. To get you going here are just a few of my favorite routines and measures and how I track them.

Sleep. I take it very seriously as I once had 9 days without it after my operation and it scared the heck out of me. I now use an Oura ring so I also measure the quality of my sleep with things like deep sleep. The routine of when you get to bed is key for setting your Circadian rhythms. Track it and you’ll see what a difference it makes.

Meditation, Mantras and Affirmations. Think about your day ahead and pick a positive mantra and affirmation for yourself to be able to achieve it. Visualize it and how great you’ll feel when you’ve done it.

Exercise. Exercise is incredibly important to me in my recovery.

As your heart rate increases during exercise, blood flow to the brain increases. As blood flow increases, your brain is exposed to more oxygen and nutrients. Exercise also induces the release of beneficial proteins in the brain. These nourishing proteins keep brain cells (also known as neurons) healthy, and promote the growth of new neurons. Neurons are the working building blocks of the brain. As a result, individual neuron health is important to overall brain health.  Source: Dana Foundation.

So whatever I do I like to walk each day. It keeps me in touch with nature – see below. But for everyone, exercise generates endorphins and other neurotransmitters that can improve your mood and sense of well being. So I like to take advantage of this and always look for what positive thoughts arise during and after my exercise. It builds on my mantras and affirmations and it’s fantastic to see the positive thoughts and ideas generated over time. Try it!

Anxiety management. If things go the wrong way in my day, and I forget to exercise early, I can get anxious. It turns out Anxiety is the number one mental health condition and it’s gotten worse in our society for many reasons. So I track mine and look at why I might be anxious and what might cause it. Here are a couple of things I’ve built into my routine to acknowledge it, and let it go.

Connecting with the world from macro to micro.

Macro. I try to always listen to the news while I’m dressing. It helps me connect with the outside world and my interests, and particularly importantly, stop the FOMO. It also reminds me of what’s going on I can’t control and need to let go of, so I can focus on what I can and want to do.

(A time tip here: Try to do things in parallel any time you can, so long as it doesn’t take you away from being present in your activity. Pick mindless activities that don’t matter to you and overlay things that do matter to you. I’ve learned that my brain needs different “inputs” for this to work. For example I can listen to the news and dress, but I can’t watch the news and dress. See what works for you.)

Micro. An example here is getting out into nature on walks and seeing even the smallest things. Here for example is a picture of a frozen puddle on the side of the road from my walk yesterday. Messy as it is, I just enjoyed the patterns in the ice.

I’m fortunate to live by the water so I also try to “see” it and the horizon and sky and even stars every day to put things from micro to macro into perspective. It really helps. Sometimes I go to great lengths to do this. Here’s a my setup to catch the recent full moon rise. (It failed miserably but it didn’t matter, I enjoyed the experience)

In fact, it doesn’t matter what it is but somehow these connections to the world and even the universe help me.

Talking of connections the most important of all for me is relationships with people and it deserves it’s own attention…

Relationships. Connect meaningfully with at least one person you care about every day. Your partner, your kids, your co-workers. It doesn’t matter who or how many. I don’t record that. I do record if I felt good about connecting and engaging with people. That comes first for me in life and nourishes the soul. Consider what it does for you and prioritize it accordingly.

Reading, learning. I realize that if I want to help people, change things and have an impact, I have to keep learning and reading and growing. Find something others haven’t observed or learned and share it. Personally I observe that it’s true that if you’re not growing your dying and I certainly feel it when I don’t take time for learning and even mastery. I’m a visual and experiential learner so I love things like YouTube rather than just reading.

(A tip here: Pick times you can get clear time. EG commuting, or if you’re working at home, early when no one is up or when you can all agree on quiet time. Just write down one thing you learned or one thing you enjoyed reading and share it with someone you care about. It’s a win-win for relationships.)

What are the other things in your day that you like to do and want to put in your routine?

Closing out.
Regardless of how our day progresses, it will come to an end! So we need a routine for shutting down. This was abundantly clear to me in the early days of my recovery when I could not sleep. I had so many pills to take or things to take care of before being readly let alone able to sleep.  I turned to my wife to help as I couldn’t trust myself and my still recovering brain at that point and we created a checklist. It was invaluable at getting my basics in place to let go in time for the night.

Capturing todos, letting problems go
I recommend you get your todo list down for the next day to clear your mind. Then pick just one problem and write down in as much detail as you can. (Problems well defined are half solved). I’m often amazed how the mind solves them overnight. Just prioritize one ideally so you’re realistic about cracking the “big rocks” in your life. (And just a reminder that sleep is vital so if you find this practice keeps you awake, DON’T do it! I’ve trained myself to do it, then read, meditate to sleep or otherwise switch off, and then it seems to work well. ) So here’s the next easy thing to do to calm your mind for sleep…

Being grateful
The day would not be complete without thinking of one or more things you’re grateful for. It might be something you experienced that day, like a great conversation. Or it might be something you’ve known but just want to reflect on, like how lucky you are to be surrounded by people you love. Whatever it is you’re grateful for, celebrate it. Then enjoy your rest, you’ve earned it!

As you can see my day can get pretty full quickly. That’s why my routine is so important.  To be realistic you can’t fit it all in in one day so get used to taking to weekly, monthly and even annual routines and use these 4 time horizons (daily, weekly, monthly, annually) to remind you to do everything important, not urgently. That way you’ll be able to put S P A C E around your life and breathe! If you can find way to develop a planning muscle, it’s like any other training of a muscle, important things not only become possible but enjoyable as you plan time for them accordingly. It’s well known that we overestimate what we can do in the short term and underestimate what we can do over the long term, so I like to think backwards. It literally helps you overachieve! Start by thinking about where you want to be as far out as possible, maybe even add an extra horizon, eg in 3yrs. Then use the other 4 horizons mentioned aove and add your own fun ones like by the summer I want to be fit enough to enjoy rowing with friends. Working backwards is a great way forward!

There’s much more that could be said on this topic so I look forward to hearing your routines and learnings in the comments below or on the attached open google doc here, and to incorporating them in future versions of this post.