Time awareness has been coming up a lot with my clients of late. Often people lose a lot of time doing necessary, repetitious tasks in an inconsistent or incomplete manner. Then what happens is that people are left coping with their poor performance or the poor results rather than on having a great life.
I help clients regularly with developing their:
- Morning Routine
- Evening Routine
- Departure Routine
- Arriving Home Routine
- Self-care Routines
- Bill-paying Routines
- Laundry Routine
These routines may seem basic and ordinary but they are essential for supporting everyday life. An element that adds to the inconsistent nature of routines is that not all factors have been taken into account. To thoroughly bed down a routine, take note of each element and how much time each of those elements takes. Say, getting ready in the morning, off the top of your head you may think it takes you 20 minutes to get ready but in reality, it’s more like 35 minutes. That 15-minutes makes a huge difference in making it on time for your first appointment or task of the day.
It’s the same with commuting. Looking at people’s calendars I’ll observe that they’ve got a meeting across town and when asked how long it will take to get there my client will estimate that it’ll take half an hour. With something scheduled right up the back of it, it’d be impossible for them to get there on time. Bringing this to their attention, we build in buffer time that incorporates their departure routine and the commute. This then becomes the start of their new calendaring habit.
Getting to that point involves five steps. These steps are what helps put together a routine that sticks:
Awareness of the Need
- Admit the need to do something
- Define why it matters.
- What needs to be accomplished?
- How would you know if it was successful?
Comfort with the Concept
- Workshop choices
- Get into the mindset that the new system/routine is an experiment
Sequence and Linked Activities
- Identify individual steps and supports
- Create a flow
- Link into memory
- Choose a start date
Build the Habit (re-engage)
- Learn in an on-going way (success and lapses)
- What conditions make it easy to maintain the desired behavior?
- What conditions made it easy to drop the desired behavior?
- Is the habit defined in a do-able way?
Fine-tune
- How could it be easier?
- What interrupts the system?
- How to re-engage with this routine if life gets in the way?
Reward
- Notice improvement
- How often are you able to do this each week?
- What’s the impact of this new routine?
Routines may just seem like a series of steps to complete an everyday routine but they’re also a safety net that you can turn to that helps keep life manageable. Take a moment and identify which routines need some attention (or need creating) that will make a really big difference in your life.
If this seems overwhelming, reach out. Let’s have a chat and see if we can sort it out for you. Thirty minutes with me may just save you hours! Book in for a call with me here.
