Are your routines routine?

Make sure you know what life really looks like

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning.
This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's
tip is to ask yourself whether your routines are routine.
If they are not, figure out why not, and adjust

(00:26):
as needed, or at least update your perception of your life.
I often hear from listeners about their struggles with time management. Recently,
one person said she wanted her routines to actually be routine.
I get that so many people have visions of their routines,

(00:48):
but a little time tracking reveals that the routine is
the exception rather than the default. Sometimes people construct whole
narratives about their lives based on routines that are not
actually routine. I have written a lot about morning routines
over the years, and I eventually started asking people how

(01:09):
often their beautiful routines actually happened. Sometimes it was every day,
but often it wasn't, even if the person would have
told you the routine was a daily thing. This can
go in the other direction too, by the way, a
person can construct a woe is Me narrative of always

(01:30):
spending their Saturdays on chores, and then I get a
time log with a Saturday spent with friends and the
person tells me this never happens, except it did. I'm
sure you have some of these routines that are not
actually routine in your life. You theoretically run every Monday, Wednesday,
and Friday before work, but the last time this happened

(01:53):
was a couple of weeks ago. Or maybe your weekly
meal prep routine involves planning the menu, grocery shopping, and
chopping veggies on Sunday afternoons, but that only happens when
you don't have anything else to do on Sundays, and
you almost always do have other plans. You call your
grandmother every Sunday on the way home from church, except

(02:14):
for those Sundays when you don't go to church, which
turns out to be most of them. If you realize
that some of your routines aren't routine, this doesn't need
to be a gotcha moment. I think it is simply
interesting data about your life and your interests and your priorities.
It might be helpful to figure out why the routine

(02:37):
isn't routine. It could be that you don't truly care
about the routine. You may feel like other people meal plan,
so you decide that you too should develop a Sunday
meal planning routine. But the truth is that your family
likes simple meals and you can get home at five
point thirty and easily get dinner on the table by six.

(02:58):
You like to do other stuff on the weekends. If
that is the case, then feel free to let this
routine go. Or perhaps your routines aren't aligned with your priorities.
You might think it would be wise to aim for
routine of unloading the dishwasher and starting a load of
laundry while your kids are eating breakfast before school, but

(03:20):
your top priority is being present and connected with your kids.
You may find that you consistently sit down to have
a more connected conversation. I don't think that's actually a problem. Instead,
figure out some other time when you can unload the
dishwasher and start the laundry. Sometimes the problem is that

(03:41):
the routine is too ambitious. You may be trying to
fit more into some part of your day than can
actually fit, which is why the routine isn't routine. Perhaps
you can pare down your routine to what is most important.
If you don't have time to write a full three
morning pages your journal in the morning, you could elect

(04:02):
to just write a paragraph, and perhaps you would find
that more sustainable. If your routines aren't routine, that is fine.
Some things don't deserve to be routine. Sometimes routines can
be simpler. Sometimes you just need to change your story.
But it is good to be aware so we can

(04:23):
make rational choices about life, rather than thinking something should
happen more often, or thinking that it does happen more
often than it actually does. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of

(04:43):
our time. Thanks for listening to Before Breakfast. If you've
got questions, ideas, or feedback, you can reach me at
Laura at Laura vandercam dot com. Before Breakfast is a

(05:06):
production of iHeartMedia. For more podcasts from iHeartMedia, please visit
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