Grow With Soul Episode 69. Structuring A Daily Routine With Kayte Ferris

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In today’s episode, I’m going to be talking about structuring your days and weeks. This is an important part of staying the course, as routine and structure a) helps you to get things done and b) helps to reduce stress and make you feel comforted by the predictability of it. I will share with you how creating a daily routine has helped me as someone who really didn't want one, and my tips for thinking about your own.

Here's what we talk about in this episode

Thinking about why you want to create a structure?
What do you want your routine and structure to do for you?
Setting out a routine that works for you
Tips for sticking to your routine
Experiment with your routines

What we discussed in this episode

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Read the episode transcript:

Hello and welcome to episode 69 and our second instalment of this mini Staying The Course series - so if you missed what this series is about and why I’m doing it, you may want to go back and listen to last week’s episode to get up to speed.

In today’s episode, I’m going to be talking about structuring your days and weeks. This is an important part of staying the course, as routine and structure a) helps you to get things done and b) helps to reduce stress and make you feel comforted by the predictability of it.

If you subscribe to my newsletter, then you’ll know that before everything really kicked off with the Coronavirus, I was already thinking of experimenting more with routine. A huge value for me in my business has always been freedom, and for a long time that also meant freedom from routine. I never wanted too feel like I ‘had to’ do anything, hated feeling like I had to be at a certain place, at a certain time doing a certain thing. I created routine-less days where I followed my energy and intuition to get my to do list done. And that mostly worked in terms of productivity - I did get stuff done. But it was starting to impact how I felt in my day to day.

As I wrote in that newsletter at the beginning of the month, I felt like I was a TV on standby - never really on, never really off. I felt like I was drifting through days, each one bleeding into the next with no demarcation of time. I could always reopen my laptop at night because I’d just wake up late, there was no routine to keep me from being in this perpetual state of being at once always working, but never quite present in the work. My aim for March had been to experiment with routine and see whether I could find a way to balance my desire for freedom with a little more structure to help my wellbeing. I didn’t realise quite how timely this would be.

As with anything, it’s important to know why you want structure in order to create the best one for you. This means that you can create the version that works for the unique reason you want it, rather than just follow the ‘shoulds’. This is the reason why if you precisely follow the templatised routines, or plans or goals of others, they likely didn’t work - because you were trying to put your square peg into someone else’s round hole. It wasn’t derived from what you as an individual needed, so it couldn’t provide the answer that you were seeking.

Another reason why the why is so important is because it acts as motivation. Starting a new habit or routine is hard, particularly if it is making you get up earlier or go through some discomfort. If you are really clear on why you want this routine, that does make it easier to get out of bed. Particularly for me, the ‘stick’ of ‘you have to do this’ doesn’t work, the carrot of ‘this is want I want’, does.

So, first things first

Make sure you feel clear and specific on what you want your routine and structure to do for you. Maybe it’s to help your mental wellbeing, maybe it’s to help you achieve a goal or get something done - “because people say it’s a good idea” isn’t a good enough reason, so make sure you can connect to it personally. And once you have that, you can start to create a routine that gets you what you want.

When you’re creating your routine, start with that thing and add it in first, prioritise it. If it’s to finish a project or increase work productivity, put in the times where you’re going to do that work. If it’s to feel better in yourself, think of the things that are going to help you to do that and schedule them in - perhaps that’s exercise or time to read or cook. You may want to try doing this on a weekly basis first, especially if, like me, you tend to react against structure - starting with weekly is more entry level and helps to leave lots of room for freedom feelings. However, I have found this month that the daily routine is where the difference lives.

When you plan a weekly routine there is more room to slide. You can ‘get away’ with waking up late one or two days, you can have some of those ‘standby’ evenings where you’re half watching telly and half in your inbox, and then these have a knock on effect to the next days and, ultimately, you’re not getting to that why. You’re not more productive or improving your mental wellbeing because you’re only kind of doing it. When you make your routine daily, you are actually moving towards that why.

I know that there will be some of you listening now thinking “ok well this doesn’t apply to me because my days are so changeable and different to each other that it’s impossible to have the same routine every day”. I know that because up to about three months ago that was what I always said. Here’s the thing: you’re in control of what this looks like. The only reason you think this can’t work for you is because you’re imagining someone else’s definition of routine.

Which is normal because we gravitate to the things we can see. So when we think of routine and structure we think about school timetables, strict bed times, regular meetings at our old office, that hyper-organised person on Instagram. But you don’t have to have a routine like that. You can have your routine. By definition a routine is just ‘a sequence of actions regularly followed’; there is no specific number of actions, no mention of a timetable. You decide the actions and the sequence that you can regularly follow.

The routine I’m playing with at the moment looks like this:

The first hour of my day, between 10am and 11am is taken up with my morning routine - getting up, cleaning teeth, walking the dog, pulling a tarot card and setting and intention for the day, and doing a short yoga video. After the morning routine, I do a work project - usually something creative as I need to do writing before I tackle any admin. I leave a two hour window for this, but might take more or less time. Then I have an hour to eat something, sit outside, or do a chore in the house like doing some laundry. After lunch, another hour and a half work project - usually more on the admin side - then half an hour to be outside in the garden or walking the dog. That marks the end of my work day, and then in the evening I read or listen to podcasts for two hours, have some chill time around dinner, then a bath and bed.

In reality, I am giving myself a lot of grace around the timings because I know the minute I wake up late I can say ‘well it’s already gone to shit I don’t need to follow it’. The most important thing is the flow, the sequence of actions. To have that rhythm that calms me, that helps me know I can get things done and know what I’m going to be doing the next day. There is plenty of freedom for me within the bounds of this structure, I have lots of space for variety of work and activities, I can change what projects I do on each day and can swap out a work project for a home one like gardening. But I have a flow to my day that helps me be on, or off - and that, after all, was the point.

I looked up some articles about routine in times of crisis just to make sure I was on the right track here, and found this quote in the Washington Post from Joel Minden, a clinical psychologist: “the most helpful routines are the ones that meet essential human needs for competence and relatedness”. And I thought that might serve as a good basis for all of our thinking about routines, no matter what our why behind it. I realised that this is why I’d put in time for a housework chore in my routine - because it makes feel competent and on top of things. My routine is helping me end each day feeling exactly that, if only because I stuck to something. So while you’re thinking about your routine and what you want from it, use competence and relatedness has a benchmark to check in with.

I thought I’d share a few little tricks I’ve also been using to help not only come up with my routine, but also stick to it too.

Time tracking

When you’re starting out with creating your routine, it’s useful to see where your time is currently going because these are the habits you may have to break. For me, I realised I was spending 5 hours a night watching re-runs of Friends while complaining I didn’t have time to read the books I wanted to (I’ve written about this more in a blog post I will link in the show notes). That was a change I was happy to make but hadn’t quite realised before. With just a little bit of time tracking you can see where there’s space for your routine, and also that the reasons you’re telling yourself why you can’t have one aren’t quite true.

Put the phone away

It’s so boring, I know, but annoyingly it does really work. During my work project and reading time, I put my phone out of reach, preferably in another room. This helps stuff to get done, but also helps me to be present in what I’m doing - fully on, or fully off.

Attach new habits to old habits

I heard this on an old episode of the Kate & Mike Show, that it’s easier to get a new habit to stick when you attach to an existing one. So for me, I already had the habit that I clean my teeth every morning, so I started doing my daily tarot card intention setting when I was cleaning my teeth to help the habit form. You may want to read a book while having your morning coffee, have a walk instead of your commute, listen to a podcast while making dinner. But I found this really worked for me,

Refine it down

A routine is no good if you have to keep checking a piece of paper to know what you’re supposed to be doing next. It needs to be simple enough that you can reel it off off the top of your head. You can also pare it down even more, which is useful if you aren’t a lover of routines, or you’re in crisis and a full routine just feels out of reach - what are three named things you can do each day? this is different from three to do list items, they are three routine elements, three actions you can do in a sequence. For me, I have Goal, Chore, Joy. Doing something, however small, towards a goal every day, doing a chore every day, and doing something that brings me joy every day. That’s my baseline, so even when everything else goes out the window or I’m having a bad day, I still get that semblance of routine to carry me through.

So, that’s all my feelings and experiences with starting a new routine. I think it’s important to say as well that you are not inextricably bound to a routine - you are always in charge of it, not the other way round. If it’s not working for you, change it up. It also doesn’t have to be the most perfect routine straight off the bat, in fact, it can’t be. Experiment with a version one for a few weeks, and then re-evaluate it. Particularly in times of stress, when you need to stay the course, these tools are to help you, not bind you. Give yourself the flexibility you need, and stay connected to why you want this for yourself.

As I mentioned last week, I also have an email support series to complement the Staying The Course podcasts, where each week I send you a worksheet related to the episode to help you go deeper and start to enact it - this week, unsurprisingly, the worksheet is about making your routine, so go to simpleandseason.com/staythecourse to get yours.