Level 3: Scheduling
Now that the two routines are in place, you can work on consistency. Having a consistent sleep rhythm does wonders for your sleep quality, for your mood in the morning, and for your ability to be productive the next day. The goal of this level is to schedule your routines as a whole, and schedule the individual actions within your routines. It might sound silly to schedule 1-minute actions, but for me this was a game changer.
When I first started out with my waking up routine, I had no sense of the time it took me to complete the entire routine. As a result, 1.5 hours had flown by and I still hadn’t eaten breakfast. Had I been dawdling that much, that it took me 1.5 hours to go from leaving my bed to arriving in the kitchen? That was definitely not the goal of my morning routine.
I attempted to solve this by timeboxing my routine. For instance, the first three actions (go to the bathroom, brush my teeth and weigh myself) take 5 minutes at most. The same goes for getting dressed and making the bed. Probably this takes less than 5 minutes but it’s good to have some slack in a schedule and even if it does take 5 minutes I would find that acceptable.
In the end, my waking up routine was scheduled like so:
As you can see, my entire routine only takes 1 hour, and that includes my 20-minute morning walk. Since there is a 15-minute buffer between my routine and the start of the work day, I also get to read a book or do some writing.
I can imagine that getting out of bed more than an hour before you need to work can be quite daunting or feel unnecessary, especially if you don't need to commute anymore. The first few weeks of quarantine and working from home, I stayed in bed for as long as I could and sometimes even dialed into meetings while brushing my teeth. On those days, the entire day would feel as if I was behind on everything. I was constantly checking when my next meeting would be and about what, checking whether I needed to prepare something while also preparing breakfast, and at the end of the day I felt like I survived, rather than owned.
Now that the first hour of the day is mine - really mine, I don’t check email, social media, or even whatsapp messages - I feel much calmer, I find it easier to focus on the things I want and need to get done, and most importantly, I feel happy. :)
Bonus
If you want to take it up a notch, I challenge you to schedule your most important to-dos of the day. Just block a time slot in your calendar to work on your to-dos. If you don’t manage to complete the to-do in that time, no worries. At least you made progress.
While I am writing this article I realize that my going to bed routine is still in the where-did-the-time-go stage. A while ago I decided to switch off all electronics at 21:30 and slowly make my way to bed. So far it’s going well, especially the ‘slowly' bit. I switch off the light on my nightstand at 23:00, so what on earth do I do between 21:30 and 23:00? I will investigate this.
I have broken up this article into a series of four parts, one for each level.
The fourth and final level is out here!
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