Let’s try something different: stop for a few minutes and reflect on our routines. Most of the time these are making the difference between a good and productive day, and a day with less success.

Maybe you are asking yourself what is the definition of a routine. It’s simple. A routine is composed of a series of habits. And habits are important in our daily life.

Also, Charles Duhigg (author of “The Power of Habit”) is saying that “40% to 45% of what we do everyday sort of feels like a decision, but it’s actually a habit.”

Why is this happening? How good are the routines? Let’s find the answer.

How can we identify our routines?

It’s simple! Let’s take a normal day from your life.

What are you doing in the morning? In the moment when the alarm clock goes off do you get off the bed? Or do you hit the snooze button and lay down for 10 more minutes?

Then we go to the next step in the morning. Start showering, wash your teeth, grab a cup of coffee and hit the door. All of these sounds familiar to most of us.

However, all the things that we are doing in the morning are just an example of routines. We are doing these activities daily and those became habits. These habits help us to be more efficient because when a routine is installed, we will act quicker, faster.

Even more, we know all the steps and the order to do them before starting any action. This is why the habit helps us and we don’t need to plan every morning.

The first thing to do

As we all agreed that we have routines, why not model the ones we have or why not create new ones? The habits are quite strong, but a routine is a set of good habits that we practice daily.

To change your daily routine, it needs to be planned and it will take some time to get used to it. But first, start with baby steps to not be overwhelmed by it.

Starting with these baby steps means to get rid of a bad habit or change it with a new good one. By doing this every day after a few weeks the habit will be incorporated in your daily routine. And then you can add a new one.

The first thing to do is to know your objectives. What I want to get or to achieve by implementing a new routine.

Let’s say you want to do physical exercises. This is your objective: physical exercises. From this goal, you will need to start putting some questions to give it a shape…
 
Continue reading the article and learn more about personal routines on Broccas.com.