Become a human again — IV: Prepare an ideal daily routine
How to rhythm your days to improve and do what you like the most.
Before starting: what is a routine?
It’s a schedule, a timetable, and a necessary time-management tool to formalize or develop habits.
You will not be going to apply each part of your routine every day correctly. It’s a landmark, a metronome of your day to grow and enjoy yourself.
It can be done during the morning or the entire day.
Most of all, this routine represents your choices.
It’s you.
It’s your spark of joy.
What will take part of your routine?
1. What do I want to do to satisfy my life and happiness?
Like everyone, I enjoy traditional things:
- I like having good times with my friends and colleagues 🍻,
- I like buzz videos and cats videos 😽 (who don’t like it 😅),
- I like news about my work (software engineering, technology, and team management),
- I like movies and TV shows,
- I like playing video games,
- I like personal growing methodologies,
- I like reading,
- I like traveling,
- I like my job,
- And, most of all, I ❤️ my 👩🏼 .
What about the 3 specific things you want to do for the next 12 months?
For example, here are mines:
- lose weight by going back to sport more regularly 🏃🏽;
- travel to New-Zealand next year with my love 😍 ;
- optimize my work and be more efficient every day with my team 📈.
In all of them, there are two things to take care: TIME and ENERGY. The second step will help you to ask yourself about increasing your time and your energy.
2. What is secondary in my life that I must forget to have more time?
This may be the most difficult step to take.
A lot of things can produce satisfaction and happiness for you. Unfortunately, those things can be addictions.
“The process only starts by eradicating addictions.”
As I mentioned in the first part: subscribe or use apps only if they bring value. It is the same for everything.
Since I was a teenager, I still enjoyed playing video games. It’s a fantastic universe that has been growing fast for the last ten years. It improves your cognitive functions, team building, accuracy, and coordination. The fact is a lot of people are playing it too long. We can enjoy and limit the time spent on it. Do you remember when your parents confiscated your console because you played too long? Have they provoked in you the behavior of hating to play video games? No. Thanks to them.
Now, I play differently.
I’ve been aware of time-consuming provoked by video games. I prefer to spend my time on things that bring me value, like the last five months, by reading or writing. Tomorrow, it will be something else.
I still feel frustrated because I miss it. I know that playing two or three hours with my favorite game, lonely or with my friends online, creates insulin in my brain and a spark of joy moment.
Why I reconsidered my spare time?
Go back to video games. What happened after playing for two hours? You are happy for the next 2 minutes, and that’s all. Dopamine worked well.
Most of the time, you raged on yourself because it was already the evening. During these few hours, you could sort papers and administrative documents, write, learn new things by watching a TED talk, etc. Learn value and things. That’s what humans still do and want to do. Don’t let your addictions take all of your precious time. Be selective and enjoy your secondary motivations sparingly.
With the evolution of life & work, priorities changed. You indirectly have less time to play video-game or watching TV series. I’ve noticed it the last eight months since I started to change my habits, by doing and prioritizing what I like the most.
So, how I’ve proceeded to improve my spare time?
The process of improving time and energy starts by eradicating addictions.
I was very addicted to social media content. If you are like I was, read the first part. You will learn how to unsubscribe from a lot of useless newsletters and how drastically limit your social subscriptions like on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube. It is what I did, and I feel better.
There are other addictions to eradicate. The first one, for instance? Stop smoking. Easy to say, right? Easy to do the math too. How many time and money do you spend on smoking every day? You know it. Your time, your money, and your health are broken. Time, money, and health: probably the most valuable keywords evoked by people on what they want to take care of. So move your a** right now. Smoking interrupts your flow and your brain by the addiction to going out smoking. There is no value in it. The only cost we can speak about is the one which goes away from your pocket.
When your addictions are removed, you have more time for other things. The process is as simple as learning a new thing: decrease step by step the time spent on your addictions. They will go away.
3. Now, write it down
To be aware of your current and future habits, write down all you do and want:
- On paper or in your notes app, write down habits you want to eradicate or limit in your life.
- Write down things you want to realize during the next 6 or 12 months.
- Select one or two things on each side (bad/good) you want to achieve in the next three months.
Writing down a macro thing will not be efficient. You have to split each macro task into micro sub-tasks. Here is an example of a trip to NZE:
Each sub-tasks will be achieved progressively. By thinking about subtasks - which are steps - you’ll realize that the task is enormous and depends on many things. You will have a better picture of it. You will do better by scheduling the steps. I described it in part 2, with a habit that consists of waking up earlier.
Finally, use a digital tool to help you and organize your mind.
Remember: step-by-step is the key.
You’ll succeed 💪.
The morning miracle
Well: I don’t want to write a bullshit article there. There are plenty of articles talking about morning routines. It works, or not. Because not every day is the same, it’s not for everyone. So be careful there. Anyway, if you want to be more productive, it all starts in the morning.
Remember when you were a child? Remember Christmas day, how fast you woke up? You can reproduce it every morning.
Setting your alarm clock, lunching, and going to work are things that produce enough motivation. Your work is the primary activity of your day. Perhaps, but it’s not all. If you think you just have to work, what is the consequence? You’ll choose the snooze option!
If you start to repulse your wake-up, you’ll repulse your work and your life. Stop it by defining things that motivate you, starting from the morning.
To help you discover and define your morning routine, I advise you to read The Miracle Morning, by Hal Elrod. Hal explains how to daily reproduce Christmas morning as you experimented when you were a child. The only difference is there is no surprise anymore waiting for you the next morning; it’s the purpose of your life.
I’ve read this book, and it’s truly motivating. It gives you a lot of tips. It’s also tricky to apply. Don’t put a lot of new habits at once in your first morning. You will fail as I do. How did I feel? I was used to waking up at 8 am, and I’ve decided to wake up the next mornings at 7 am. No step by step. I’ve also decided to meditate, then take a shower, have lunch, etc. Too many things at once. It’s the perfect way to fail.
I’ve learned the lesson. The next days, I decided to wake-up 5 minutes by 5 minutes earlier in the morning. I’ve forgotten the idea of meditating. Why? Because I wanted to experiment with something that I finally didn’t want to do, I forced myself to meditate. It could not work. Instead, I’ve decided to use my time by reading or writing in the morning. That was better.
Mornings after mornings, I improve my wake-up time. I feel more energy than ever before, before starting work. Why? Because I’ve done things earlier that over motivate me: like taking the time to read and write on personal development, taking the time to prepare my day, stopping to be late at work, etc.
Most of all, please remember this: don’t do things too earlier and too much at once. You will fail.
Here is the post of Roy Huff ♛ called “How To Create Your Miracle Morning In 1 Minute”. It will help you and teach you how to prepare yourself for a morning routine.
Do it the entire day
I’ve no more to say. You can do it only in the morning, the day or the evening.
It’s your routine and not a copy-paste from other people.
Prepare your day and work day by defining tasks and repetitive tasks.
By improving your time and choosing what motivates you, you will increase your daily energy.
You know what? You still will have time to play video games ;)
Just for example, here is mine:
Routine yes, but regularly adjusted and renewed
Perhaps when you’ve read the parts before, you’ve reacted like this:
“Wait, what!? Are you telling us to write down an automatic routine like a bot? Your series is about to become a human again, isn’t it!?”.
Yes, you’re right. Routine is an automatic behavior. Routine is good, but it can be tedious.
It’s why you must adjust and renew it regularly, by including new steps or things into your morning or daily routine. Our brain also has an automatic drive of things, and it could easily feel yourself having lazy moments. Brain like lazy stuff, but the time of your life doesn’t.
Here are my next three goals for the next three months:
- finally wake-up at 6:30 am and sleep at 11:30 pm; => 2021 edit, I failed. I’m, by definition, not a morning person.
- increase my expertise at work, by decreasing and switching the amount of time reading personal growth posts to iOS technicals and management posts; 2021 edit: success.
- take breaks every 2 hours during my working day => 2021 edit: success.
Do you want to run or do cardio 🏃🏽 for an hour as I do? Start to do sport two times during 20 minutes, next raise up your activity by five mins each two activities. In less than 16 activities, you’ll be able to do sport during an hour, and perhaps running a distance of 10km. Good job!
Do you want to stop smoking? You can write down and regularly adjust the number of cigarettes you want to burn a day, a week, a month, to finally eradicate it by zero. Use your friends and family to be accountable and have the right support during this challenge. Your body and your immune system will thank you.
A routine is not only about learning good habits, but it’s also about eradicating bad habits continuously.
“We can’t be someone, but we can improve ourselves.”
If there is a problem, it will probably mainly be you.
Procrastinating is usual. I’ve already mentioned it. We only have to stop our limiting beliefs. We can’t be someone, but we can improve ourselves. If you are not convicted of yourself, I advise you to read the book “Re-Create Your Life” by Morty Lefkoe.
“When limiting beliefs are unlearned, people are able to make lasting changes to their emotions and behavior freeing them to live more fulfilling lives. This book shows how unlearning beliefs has unleashed the potential of thousands of people to create lives they love.” —Re-Create Your Life.
Want to go further?
Be sure that you have read the previous parts of “Become a human again” before starting preparing your daily routine:
- Introduction — Stop being a bot, become a human again
- I: Stop your RSS feed and social addictions
- II: Decrease your mental charge and get things done
- III: Stop multitasking your brain, be focus
If you want to improve your life and use personal development technics, follow Nicolas Cole and Benjamin P. Hardy, for instance. Their posts are inspiring. Just do not over-consume those posts. Honestly, I’ve started to decrease the amount of personal development reading to not being an obtuse guy. That’s why I am writing this series: to share tips with you that work for me and which will work for you.
Don’t let self-improvement make you worst, as Niklas Goeke correctly mentioned it.
Personal development is all about changing habits and learn new ones to grow yourself, but it’s also about speaking to others. That’s we’ll learn in our final part V: Be a good communicant.
And you? Do you have a daily, morning, or evening routine? What’re your tips?
Thank you if you’re still here 🍻.
