How to Plan a Daily Routine and Still Enjoy Variety and Spontaneity

Having a daily routine has been proven to be good for our health, physically and mentally. Using a planner is another good thing to do every day in order to be successful, crush your goals, and get things done.

Making a daily routine and using a daily planner are simple good habits everyone should adopt.

But what if you are one of those people who values spontaneity? What if you are one of those people who would rather fly by the seat of your pants than plan things? What if you want to do whatever you want whenever you want without having to follow a checklist, rules, guidelines, and plans?

It’s a good question; does having a daily routine and planning your life mean you can’t be spontaneous?

I have struggled with this as well. Although I am obsessed with planners, I still value freedom and having no obligations. Oftentimes I buy (and create) more planners than I even use. I am guilty of buying or creating a planner and then simply not even using it because I too, end up just doing whatever I want whenever I want.

I have also struggled with routines. I know they are necessary to live a healthy lifestyle, but sometimes I just don’t feel like doing the things I put on my schedule to do every morning or night. Sometimes life gets in the way and I can’t do any of it. And that’s ok.

Nobody follows routines and schedules 100% according to plan. Yes, they do work better when done consistently, but anything is better than nothing.

When traveling, it’s almost impossible to stick to a schedule or a routine.

This is one of the reasons why traveling is considered stressful (although it’s fun, it’s still a disruption from the regular routine).

This is why it is common for people to experience insomnia, stomach aches, and constipation while traveling. The body needs routine in order to function properly.

Going on vacation is fun, but your body might hate you for it. When you get home from a trip is often when you will come down with a cold because a disruption of your normal daily routine weakens the immune system.

Since I love routines and planning but also love being flexible and allowing room for spontaneity, I have learned a few tricks to making them all possible at the same time.

Here are some ways to have a daily routine that doesn’t suck the spontaneity out of your life:

Allowing yourself plenty of free time. Daily routines are mostly just a morning routine and a nighttime routine, both of which can take as little as 10 minutes. Of course, more is better, but if you really hate routine that much, you can do 10 minutes which still leaves many hours in your day to be spontaneous.

Go ahead, take lots of vacations. You can still decide on a whim to fly across the country and also give yourself 10 minutes every morning and night to do your routines. These will also help your body feel less stressed. If you start and end your day with something familiar and comfortable, your body will adjust to travel much more easily.

Think of routines as the bookends of your day. A great beginning and a great end to your day is all you really need to benefit from a daily routine while having plenty of wiggle room in the middle. Think of it in percentages, 10% of your morning and 10% of your night is only 20%, leaving you 80% to do as you wish!

Create routines that you love. Naturally, you will want to do things if you enjoy them, so don’t put anything on your list that you know you will have no motivation to do.

Create short overlapping routine activities. As I mentioned earlier, you can do 10 routine activities if they are short and you can squeeze them into a 10-minute time slot. You can even do a few of them at the same time, shortening the overall time. For example, you can drink a cup of tea while you are journaling. Or watching the sunrise while doing yoga.

Do your routine activities anytime you want. If you are really struggling to stick to a morning or nighttime routine, you can still do the same activities but just do them whenever you want. This probably won’t give you the same benefits as a consistent routine would but doing a healthy habit a few times a month is better than not doing it at all.

Below is a list of some daily routine ideas that you can mix and match to find a routine that works for you.

Now let’s look at some ways you can benefit from using a planner and still keep some spontaneity and fun in your life:

Plan loosely. One example of this is to write down the things you want to do in a month, then give yourself all month to get everything done without breaking down exactly when to do each thing. You don’t have to plan down to the hour.

Make sections in your planner like “Things To Get Done By Saturday” or “Start These Things in November”, that way you can still be productive but you are giving yourself some leeway. This method requires more will-power but also allows for more freedom of what you choose to do each day.

Stick some fun things in there. Planning can be fun if you have a lot of enjoyable tasks on your list. To-do lists are generally made up of chores and obligations but that doesn’t have to be all they include. When you have fun stuff like watching YouTube videos interspersed with cleaning and errands, it will make planning more bearable.

Make big goals a part of your plan. Planning gets fun when it’s revolved around a major life goal. This is also the stuff that is made for planning. So find your bucket list and pick a big goal, break it down into little ones, and then suddenly planning will become inspiring and motivational rather than dreadful and monotonous.

Get creative. Bullet journals are a good example of this. In a bullet journal, they are just as much about creativity as they are about what you are writing. Even a boring colorless planner can become an art project as you find new creative ways to write things down, organize them, and check things off as you do them.

If you’re in need of a planner, I have planners of all types including meal planners, healthy eating planners, healthy lifestyle planners, student planners, blog planners, self-care planners, law of attraction/manifestation planners, as well as many different styles of basic 3-page planners with daily/hourly, weekly, and monthly planning sheets in my Etsy shop, just click that link to check them out!