Routinize your Resolutions

Well, its that time of the year. A year has gone by, a new year is knocking at the door, staring at us with new possibilities and prospects. Here we go again with the new year resolutions. We all know how most of the resolutions end, after weeks or sometimes even few days of energy and passion. It doesn’t need to be that way. Discipline in maintaining a sustainable routine is the key. An amazing LinkedIn tutorial “Building better Routines” by Mike Vardy talks brilliantly on how to go about this, by identifying and routinizing the routines. Follow these easy to follow steps and achieve the new year resolutions in style. Lets start.

Become a better version of yourself: “Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development. Success is something that you attract, by the person you become”. This is what is meant by competing with oneself, the need to continuously strive in becoming a better version of yourself everyday. “Success” and “better” are very relative terms and you get to decide what they mean to you. There is no shortcut in getting better, it has to go through incremental stages and this is where the power of routines come to play.

Miracle Mornings: Given a good amount of time, mornings are probably the best time of the day to contemplate and spend valuable time with the self. Wake up early, set aside 30 minutes to go over below schedule:

1. Practice Silence for greater clarity – Use meditation to have specific results.
2. Stay relaxed but attentive in your silence – Sit in upright posture. Reflect, but don’t judge yourself
3. Make truthful affirmations – Don’t lie to yourself by saying things like I will become a millionaire soon or I will get fit tomorrow. Say something realistic like I will invest time & energy in understanding financial management or I will workout to get more fitter.
4. Craft your affirmations as commitments – Ask yourselves these 4 questions a) What are you committed to? b) Why is it meaningful to you? c) What activities will you commit for success? d) When specifically are you going to do these activities?
5. Use Visualization to motivate yourself – Visualizing the end result is easy. At the end you want to be rich, or happy, or healthy. But visualize the actual activity to reach there; the struggles of working out, planning the finances, cutting down on non-essentials, etc.
6. Boost your energy with morning exercise – Even a 10 minute workout can vitalize an incredible energy in body and mind.
7. Ready few pages each day – Books, articles, or whatever you like, read a few pages.
8. Scribing – Journaling is a fantastic way to streamline your thoughts, commitments and priorities. Journaling can be as simple as jotting down 3 things you are grateful for and 3 things you would like to do today (doing which you consider the day as successful).
9. Appreciate your current place in the journey – This is the most important step, to understand and appreciate what you have achieved so far.

Classification of routines: Routines can be classified and clubbed into below categories:

1. Time based routines: All tasks taking roughly same time, put them in one basket. Ex: Shower 10mins, practice meditation/devotion 15 mins, Dinner 15 mins, club them together as a 45-mins routine.
2. Energy based routines: All routines needing high energy club them together. Routines requiring low energy can be grouped separately. In the morning, we can target to do high energy routines, and after a busy day at work, in the evening when you are low on energy, stick with low energy routines.
3. Activity based routines: All routines having similar type of activities can be grouped together so that the context switch is less. We could group reading, research, writing, etc together. We can form a “Make calls” routine where we make all the calls for the day or week.

Tracking routines: “What gets measured, gets managed” – Peter Drucker. Measuring or tracking the routines gives us a sense of accomplishments and motivation to continue further.

1. Routine Checklist – Write every step of a routine& ensure we go through all of it to give confidence. A saying goes “Confidence breeds competence, competence leads to mastery”.
2. Mark the days – Tabulate your routines and keep count when you complete any routine (each of them separately). Use the Tally/hash marks for counting. Even if you miss a routine one day, continue the count when you do the routine next time. Main point is the continuity of the routine itself (few misses here and there is OK). Usually, when we miss a routine, there is a tendency to stop the routing entirely, this should be avoided.
3. Journaling – Keep track of how you are performing the routines. If you missed a routine, don’t be hard on yourself. Just write down why you missed the routine & move on.

Future Proof the routines: Its very important to ensure the routines do remain a routine.

1. Make routines portable: A routine should not be tied to a geography or location. Ex: If the routine is about exercising in the gym, we need to plan an alternative when you are travelling.
2. Scale your routines: See if the routine can be scaled based on time constraints. As the important point is the continuity, we should try to have shorter version of the routine when time is very limited, and go for longer version whenever time is in luxury.
3. Routinely routinize: Routinely retrospect on the current task list. Is this routine still valid? Keep iterating over the routines and make modifications as necessary.

Identifying routine tasks: What are you doing now? What do you want to do?

1. Write down daily tasks: We all do few basic routines every day like brushing teeth, having lunch & dinner, shower, spending time with family, etc. Take a sheet of paper and write down all the activities you do now.
2. Write down additional tasks you want to do: Depending on your resolution, it could be like having lunch at fixed time, working out, attending specific class, reading books, spending time with or calling someone, etc.
3. Rank in terms of priority: As the resolution is fresh in mind, we have lot of exciting things to do. However, its very important to not get carried away & always remember: “You can do anything, but you cant do everything“.

Now that you are clear with the tasks and their priorities, plant them appropriately into your calendar. After all this retrospection and planning stages, now it all comes down to efficient execution. With the tracking & future proofing skills newly acquired, you should now be able to better keep up the steam. Good luck with your new year resolutions. Wish you an amazing New Year 2022 !