When it’s time to go to college, start a new job, or any other meaningful venture, routine is what can help you keep on track and not miss anything important. And it’s not just about the work. A big chunk of what usually weighs us down is the inability to distinguish between what the people make our priority and our own wishes. How often have you ignored your needs to get through an overwhelming task? For me, it’s more than I would like to admit.
So how do you deal with what would seem like a dead-end? First, get your priorities straight. What is more vital for you, the time you get to spend with your loved ones or 4 hours wasted on an essay you won’t remember in a year?
When it comes to studying, you need to identify how important the course is for you and whether the time and effort spent on it are worth the outcome. If not, one of the ways to deal with it would be to paper writing service that can do that annoying essay for you. Your next step should be defining all the critical tasks and building a routine out of them. We’ve prepared some advice for you on how to do that.
Start Small
One problem people usually have with routines is following them. There are many reasons to give up on new habits, but the most popular are planning too much and doing too little. To start a successful routine, you need to start small. There’s no need to plan a 10-step morning routine if you’re going to ignore half of it. This will negatively affect your mental state and cause you to doubt your ability to do something good for yourself.
If your life is busy and you have a problem singling out what’s really important, you probably won’t see a newly created plan as a crucial element of your life. That’s the weird way our brains work, so we need to adjust accordingly. Begin your routine just with a set wake-up time and a promise not to grab your phone first thing in the morning and try to keep it up. After a while, when it becomes a habit, you can start adding new elements.
Don’t Create New Routines – Update the Existing
If you think you’d benefit from a bedtime routine, consider what you usually do before going to bed. Separate the good habits from the bad and make them regular. Then you can add on to them. Stacking habits is a popular principle that takes out planning out of your new routine. After all, it’s much easier to keep up with flossing if it goes right after brushing your teeth than just in the middle of the day.
It works the same for anything else. Set your mind to look for the signals during the day, and you’ll definitely be successful in following the routine.
Focus on You
As you can see, we’ve mostly centered around the technique and didn’t offer many examples of a steady routine. Do you want to know why that is? The answer is kind of simple – there’s no good in using someone else’s routine.
Sure, you can borrow some ideas you’ve heard about, but you need to consciously plan what works for you specifically. For example, you don’t need to wake up at 5 am if you live somewhere where the sun doesn’t rise that early or drink lemon water if you have stomach issues. To keep up with a routine, it needs to be something you will benefit from or lead you to something you want to achieve.
Don’t Strive for Perfection
For some of us, it’s important to always be successful in everything we do. The reality, however, is that it’s not always possible. Habits take time and dedication, so giving up halfway there won’t do you any good.
Resolve comes first when building a routine. You need to remember that not all days will be ideal: sometimes, life just comes in the way of your plans, and it’s okay. The main thing is to not beat yourself up trying to keep up with the standards you set in your head.
Learn to Forgive
So, what do you do if you’ve missed a day or two or a couple of months? You need to remember that blaming yourself won’t do you any good. What can really help and make everything better is starting again. Forgiving the small things is really the best-case scenario in terms of building a routine since the faster you go back to your plans, the better the outcome will be.
Never Forget
If you find yourself forgetting or ignoring the plans you’ve made, you need to make sure to set up reminders that you won’t overlook. The most obvious choices are alarm and calendar. But those can get lost under the heaps of notifications from paper writing services and other apps on your phone.
Try using some environmental reminders you will definitely see. Put a sticky note on your mirror, write on a magnetic board on your fridge, or leave a message on your bedside table – make sure you’ll notice it. The beauty of routines is that they consist of set actions you do one by one, so if you’ve done the first one, it will act like a reminder for all the next ones.
Make It Comfy
The last secret to keeping up your habits is being comfortable. If you take the joy out of your days, you won’t follow the routine for a long time, or you will become miserable. But it’s not our goal at all.
Routine aims to put your life in order and bring your mind to a better place, so liking what you do should be your priority. Think of what you always wanted to do and start doing it! Only this way can you really start changing your life.