This is the fourth and final part of a series.
If you’ve arrived at this level you have come a long way, awesome. By now you have two sets of routines and a time stamp for every part of the routines. You’ll notice that it’s not always easy to keep to your schedules or routines. In fact, it’s super easy to deviate from them!
I remember feeling proud when I established my routines and stuck to the schedule for two weeks on end. Then, one evening, I lost track of time while meeting with friends and I was running 30 minutes late on my going to bed routine. I felt guilty towards myself for failing at my own schedule, felt stressed about the fact that I would be losing some sleep, and I started doing the math on what part of the evening routine I can skip to make up for losing sleep. When I finally got to bed my mind was still racing and it took me an hour to fall asleep, causing me to lose even more sleep.
The next day I felt like an idiot (and groggy, and sleepy). Why did I freak out so much about something I imposed on myself, and how did I let that 30-minute delay escalate to 1.5 hours of lost sleep?
Level 4: Be kind to yourself
The valuable lesson I learned here is to be flexible, and allow for unforeseen events. If I had just stayed calm, accepted the prospect of losing 30 minutes of sleep, or simply decided to skip the entire evening ritual to save my sleep, I would have had a much better night (and a much better tomorrow).
Several weeks later, I had overslept by almost an hour. I woke up naturally instead of being woken by my wake up light or music, and I felt refreshed. My first instinct was to curse, jump out of bed (not with a smile on my face) and be mad at myself. However, having learned from that other event, I decided to just be happy about the fact that I slept excellently and to focus on the health benefits of getting enough sleep. In terms of my waking up routine, I moved my morning walk to my lunch break and had a quick breakfast while reviewing my most important to-dos of the day.
My main message is to be kind to yourself. A happy person is a productive person. I’ve experienced first-hand how easy it is to push yourself in a negative spiral, but what do you gain from it? The purpose of these routines is to be more productive. Don’t defeat the purpose by getting mad at yourself for not executing everything perfectly. The day I couldn’t fully execute my morning routine I didn’t feel less productive. If anything, I had more energy because I slept well, and ultimately I didn’t even ‘miss out’ on my morning routine. I just scattered it across the day.
I hope you enjoyed this series! I'm curious to whether you were able to implement some of the tips I shared, so feel free to reach out to me via email (info@productivithee) or Instagram (@productivithee) or any other medium we are connected on.
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