Back-to-school season is a gift of reinvention, in this case, reinvention of your routine.
Today I am going to share with you how to make this back-to-school season into an opportunity to reset and examine your routines in order to go into the school year successfully.
Routines are important and they’re effective because with the right routines, you don’t have to make decisions when you’re in the situation where you have the time and space to work.
So join me, let’s fall in love with the reset!
Show Links:
Show Takeaways:
- Imagine a routine that does not require a 24/7 hustle.
- Design a routine that aligns with how you want to uniquely show up for your life and work.
- Hear why successful routines include rest.
Rather read than listen? ⬇️
I recently had a client tell me at the end of our 6 months together that I have a gentle tough love thing about me, where I tell it like it is but in a way that doesn’t necessarily trigger a defense response.
Anyone else love the reset of back-to-school time?
Even when I was in school, I secretly loved that time because it was a fresh start, a new opportunity to become who I was meant to be, and I got to shop for and stockpile school supplies, one of my favorite things ever. I mean who doesn’t love getting brand new Sharpies, pens that actually write, dividers to organize all that paper, and the notebooks, oh the blank notebooks.
And it’s always been an opportunity to reset and examine my routines in order to go into the school year successfully.
Even though I am outta school now (I graduated high school in 2006 and college in 2010), I still feel this way come August and September, but for different reasons.
Now that my daughter is on a regular routine of returning to school in late August, I get to fall in love with the reset all over again.
Where summer feels low-key, fun, and flighty, back-to-school time and the impending fall feel like get-down-to-business time, especially when I see that just 4 months remain before the next reset of a brand-new year. 4 months is a long time to make major progress on the goals you have for yourself and if you want to make sure you aren’t wasting it, you can certainly leverage this back-to-school reset as an opportunity to refresh your routines for a new season.
Routines are important and effective because with the right routines, you don’t have to make decisions when you are in the situation where you have the time and space to work. Otherwise, you just might end up writing 0 blog posts instead of the 4 you needed to write this week!
According to Merriam-Webster, “routine” means “habitual or mechanical performance of an established procedure.” We know that habits are important because they allow us to perform tasks or actions without conscious thought. I go a bit deeper into habits in episode 003, so feel free to check out that episode next.
This is important because it is estimated that we make 35,000 conscious decisions each day and I don’t know about you but that sounds exhausting. If I can take a few of those off my plate and get closer to my goals, I am all in. Decision fatigue is real!
Routines allow you to be proactive about how you want to spend your limited time, intentionally design your actions, days, and weeks, and then leverage your energy and cognitive bandwidth on a day-to-day basis to enact the plan and live the routines rather than utilizing that energy trying to decide what to do in any given moment.
Routines often get a bad rap. Especially among those who consider themselves creatives. Because routines sound stuffy, perfectionistic, and like it requires a 24-7 hustle.
Routines don’t have to be any of those things. For these routines to work for you, they have to work for you.
Routines can provide a loose structure that gives you the freedom you need. Yes, structure can give you freedom.
And these routines don’t have to be perfect right outta the gate. That is the issue that most people have with routines. They think it has to be just right the first go round and then give up on the whole thing when it isn’t. It gets to be a process of optimizing and finessing and experimenting.
And finally, this whole idea of hustle or go-go-go? Yea, no. Successful routines have to include intentional rest and self care. That has to be true for it to be sustainable.
So, how do you create a routine to help you?
First, you need to identify the area where you need a routine. A great place to start is how you choose to spend your days. Having an ideal schedule whether on a daily or weekly basis can give you direction and structure for how to organize the things you need and want to do.
Once you identify what area to create routine in, lay out what an ideal situation or routine would look like.
Then create a plan to begin to close the gap between where you currently are and what your ideal is. And start enacting it.
Action Step:
I always like to end each episode with an action step that you can take right now to help you move forward and begin to implement immediately. Here is your action step for this episode: Look at where in your life you would most benefit from a renewed routine. Then dream and brainstorm what the ideal routine would look like.
