I have written before what you can learn from living in a monastery, as described in a book of Anselm Grün and Petra Altmann. Today I would like to add something. Have a daily routine. Do you think that sounds boring? Yes, it does. Will it help you though? Absolutely!
What are the advantages of a daily routine? According to Grün and Altman there are many – and I can add my own experiences to confirm their theory.
A regular routine gives security, makes it easier to plan and saves time. By adding structure to your day, you save time, because you will work with more concentration. And you will gain energy because you don’t have to decide every day what you are going to do. By planning some breaks, you will have moments to relax which will renew your energy levels. So, many advantages!
Once you have implemented a daily routine, you will notice that these breaks won’t waste your time, but you will actually gain time. A break will let you immerse in another world for a while. After that you can continue afresh again. Of course you will be more productive!
You have to consider your daily relaxing breaks as a fixed meeting with yourself, an agreement. Once you start practicing this, you will find out that such a break is not an annoying duty but time well spent.
How do you create a daily routine? Have a look at the following two steps.
Step 1: Find out how a day goes by.
- Sit down quietly and jot down the normal stages of your day.
- Consider closely which ones are the really necessary tasks and activities.
- And which ones can you set aside? Which activities are mainly pastimes?
Step 2: create the ideal planning of a day
- Make your ideal schedule of the day.
- Include some relaxing time, not because you are going to walk away from your tasks but to regain new energy for the rest of the day.
- When do you schedule these breaks? It would make sense to have a break in the morning, one in the afternoon and in the evening an evaluating reflection of the day.
- How much time do you want to (and can you) plan for that?
- Plan realistically (I wrote about this before, click here if you want to read more). If you build in big time periods for relaxing breaks, you risk that you have to skip them again. However, you will always find 10 minutes somewhere in your day.
- Don’t see these breaks as compulsory for the day but time reserved specially for you.
Give yourself time to achieve your ideal day. You will gain the following advantages:
· More security
· Better planning of the day
· Saving time
· Working with better concentration
· You don’t need to decide each day what you need to do so you will have more energy
· Renewed energy because of your breaks
It would be great to know what your experiences are after implementing these 2 steps.
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