Peace of Mind Organizing

Behold the power of the daily routine

6 July 2011

I think habits and routines are incredibly important for making life easier and achieving what you want. The routines I have created have helped me, a naturally messy person, maintain a semblance of order in my home.

Some habits are daily, like running and emptying the dishwasher, wiping down the bathroom fixtures and cleaning off my desk. Others are tied to circumstances, rather than day or time of day, like my scooping poop in the backyard immediately after I walk my dog.

Sporadic activities can be made into solid habits. But daily routines? Those are the ones that really have power.

This was brought home to me recently when I thought about the two daily routines I’ve been absolutely passionate about: getting my inbox down to zero messages every day, and exercising every morning. (I actually sometimes let myself off the email hook on the weekends, but I usually regret it on Monday morning.)

I’ve been exercising daily since June 13. This feels absolutely miraculous to me. I was having the hardest time getting myself to exercise at my usual time, which is after work. I was just too busy and tired. So I decided to try doing it first thing in the morning. It’s worked out so well that even on a day where I overslept a little, I managed to squeeze it in.

There are two factors at play here that make daily routines so powerful:

• It’s easy to build a chain. If you’re doing something every single day, it feels like a bigger deal to miss a day.

• The benefits are so apparent. When you do something daily, you don’t let a backlog build up. And when there’s no backlog, it’s easier to do. This works beautifully for email (and is one of the reasons I love my inbox zero policy). But it even applies to exercise—if I keep up with it, I stay in shape and exercising doesn’t become difficult.

Of course the difficulty comes when your routine is completely broken, like mine will be next week when I spend a week visiting my parents. Perhaps I’ll squeeze some early-morning exercise in (though I’m not traveling with my Wii Fit, my preferred way of exercising). But if I can’t, the key will be in jumping right back into the routine when I return home.

Knowing how great it’s been to get my exercise finished before the day even begins, I have high hope I’ll get right back in the saddle. I’ll post here and let you know (accountability is powerful too!).

Tagged with: don't break the chain, email, exercise, habits

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