(Over)Organizing My Life - Routines
A couple years ago, I posted a post giving tips on how to more easily manage your time (https://www.theplanetuniverse.com/post/time-management-in-high-school-part-1
, https://www.theplanetuniverse.com/post/time-management-part-2). I wanted to expand on those posts by describing how I effectively use my time, minimize stress and maximize my well-being all at the same time. This is a series of blog posts and you can find the other parts of this series in the related posts below.
Disclaimer - What works for me won't work for everyone, so I suggest you ONLY take my methods as a source of inspiration.
The easiest and most effective way to promote your time-management and make your life easier is to implement some sort of routine in your life. I have gradually implemented a regular morning, afternoon, and evening routine into my life that I try to carry out every day.
Using a bullet journal/productivity app has helped me keep track of my routines and my implementation of them. Personally, I switch between my bullet journal and a productivity website and app known as Notion to keep track of my routines, both of which I would strongly recommend. I'll go more into how I use Notion and my bullet journal in a later post, but I've attached my screenshots of my routines below.
Morning Routine
I've decided to not add my afternoon routine because it is very centered around my schedule, and not as adaptable for others.
Night Routine
Adding these simple routines to my life have made me feel more in control and productive, which has really bettered my mood. Performing these routines at the beginning and end of the day will help you both begin and end the day on a good note. In addition, routines can make sure you consistently keep up with good habits everyday.
On the topic of habits, setting in place regular habits to keep up through habit trackers can ensure you keep up with them. Personally, I feel like using a habit tracker is a much more satisfying method of storing habits than just your mind, or even just a to-do list, ever could.
Like I did for my routines, I store my habit tracker in Notion or my bullet journal. Notion has a great template for habit tracking, in which you just insert the date, and check off the habits that you engaged in that day. I'll attach an example below.
Although this isn't mine, I've formatted mine very similar to this example above.
Every night, I go in and update my habit tracker before I sleep. I set goals at the beginning of the month for how many days I want to have each of the goals done.