STICK TO A SCHEDULE
It’s Monday. Love’em or hate’em, Mondays represent a beginning. They can either signify yet another long and boring week ahead, or they can mean an exciting new chapter. It’s your call.
The best way to handle a Monday (and the subsequent days of the week) is to create a plan and stick to it. When you know what’s coming up in your schedule, it takes some of that what-the-fuck-do-I-do-next feeling off your mind so you can focus on the things that are truly important in life.
Instead of worrying about when you’re going to do laundry or take the kids swimming, put it on the calendar. Not sure when to get your oil changed? Make an appointment (which helps with accountability) and put it on the calendar. Need a shower? Fuck it. Put that on the calendar too. Then, just follow your calendar as you would any map (or GPS for the younger generations).
In the same way we love our habits, we love routine. If you have repeating tasks such as going to the gym, try to schedule those things at the same time each day and on the same day each week. Your brain will thank you for it.
Every night before bed, check your schedule for the next day so when you wake up, you feel ready. If you’re someone who has trouble waking up in the morning, try scheduling something you really enjoy like reading, yoga, extra time for coffee, or writing that novel you’ve talked about for years.
Best case scenario is that you have a system in place to share your calendar with your family, such as iCloud Family Sharing or a shared Google Calendar, that not only lets you sync your calendars across all your own devices, but also with your spouse’s calendar. Honestly, even if it’s a paper calendar on the wall in your kitchen, just use something that lets you write down everything that takes up your time and then lets you see what’s coming up over the next few days.
Your new habit, should you choose to accept it, is that as soon as you make a schedule decision, put it in your calendar immediately. Don’t just assume that because you booked a dentist appointment, you’ll remember it and certainly don’t assume your partner or family will know that you’re unavailable during that time.
Yeah, ok, I know. Things don’t always go to plan. Shit happens. You might have to move things around when something suddenly pops up like catching a cold or your car breaking down. That’s fine. You’re an adult and you can adapt. Just shift your appointments and then follow that new plan as you would the same way as if you had to take a detour on the road.
The writing-it-down habit doesn’t work for shit if you don’t also add the review-your-calendar habit. It’s equally as important to the process if not more so. Remember, the goal here is to free up your brain to focus on more important things. We’re trying to put some of the tedium of life on auto-pilot. Keeping a strong schedule can give you that freedom. It really is liberating to get that shit out of your head and safely stored in your calendar (with alerts for the things you’re likely to forget).
Another bonus is that putting things in your calendar also gives you a reference of when something happened in the past. So if you forget the last time you had a date with your partner, you can just look it up to figure out how many flowers you need to buy to make up for how long it’s been.
If you can handle the tech aspect (and I bet you can), I really recommend iCloud or Google Calendar for use on your phone. It’s really hard to keep a paper calendar up to date if you don’t have it with you at all times. It also helps to create calendar categories for things like “Work,” “Home,” “Health,” or “Kids” in order to color-code events to see them at a glance.
Whatever you do, don’t keep your schedule in different places. Half on a paper calendar and half on your phone is a recipe for disaster. In the words of The Highlander, “There can be only one.”
