Routine Refresh.

Without routine, things generally fall apart from me. Taking the Peterson perspective, structure in your life makes order out of chaos. There are infinitely many things you could do and infinitely many ways you could do them, so how do we decide? We use our value hierarchies, whether we accept their existence or not. We use our God; those ideals which we worship. Routine is the emergent calm that comes out of this decision to structure our lives.

What is your ideal day? There is a helpful exercise that comes from answering this question. This is where you find your God.

Depending on what you do for work, this question can be answered in varied levels of detail. When I was working in a warehouse, I could confidently block out from 7am to 6pm as “work”. The only time I had to play with was outside of those hours. There’s a strange freedom to this: less decisions needed to be made. Rather than trying to decide what to do with 16 hours, I only had about five, maybe eight if you include transit and lunch breaks. Right now, however, I get to decide on effectively all 16 hours. The task is more difficult. Building an emergent property into your own life is not as easy as it sounds. Corporations do this well. Now that I am working on a farm, there are often things that get in the way, emergencies that come up and days when I must be very flexible. This is the purpose of this exercise. It is not going to occur consistently, but instead is something to aim towards.

In this video, I am going to describe my current ideal day to you. If you are going down a similar personal development path, it might give you some ideas on what you want to incorporate within your day. In the same way, I’d love to hear from you in the comments down below any ideas on the ideal day. I’m sure there are plenty of things you are doing better than I am.

In my ideal day, I am going to break it down into three parts: morning, work time and night. I could list ten different things that I would like to do in each of these things, but the list would just get exhaustive, and I may never get any of them done. Instead, I will list three things for each of these three parts. Rule of three seems to work well, and I might add a bonus on the end to make 10 because that’s a nice even number.

Morning:

  • Planning journal
  • Work out
  • Write

Day time:

  • Work
  • Read for work
  • Post

Night:

  • Recap journal
  • Meditate
  • Read for me

Bonus:

  • Sleep

Most of these are self-explanatory and self-justifying. Journaling and reading are intentionally entered twice, but both entries serve different purposes. Let’s write a short passage on each of these habits to justify them to myself once again.

Morning:

  • Planning journal

This is one of those skeleton habits that keeps me on track for all the others. Planning my day each morning reminds me of all the other habits that I need to complete. The structure of my journal is a list (I like lists). I will write a brief plan for the day; three things that I want to be complete. Then, I’ll write three things I’m grateful for. Then, a vision for the future. Finally, I’ll write down my goals for the year. These are the four subheadings under “journal”, but beyond “journal”, there are also a few other things I need to do in the morning. This journaling habit, however, triggers those other events. This sets up a somewhat productive morning which hopefully flows on throughout the day.

  • Work out

Working out is the next event. I’ve structured my workouts so that I am doing three different sets of exercises each morning on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, then repeating that set from Thursday through Saturday with a rest day on Sunday. This has worked with varying degrees of success over the past two years. As it is a complex system integrated with other things in my life, of course things often get in the way, for example laziness. But that is the plan.

  • Write

I shouldn’t need to profess the advantages of writing, but I will anyway. If you write things down, even if they are silly little blog posts like this one, you WILL become more articulate. Your ability to find the right words for what you are trying to express will improve. This is among the most important things that you will learn in your life. If you can express yourself properly, the sky is the limit.

Day time:

  • Work

I put this in because it is a habit, even if sometimes it doesn’t feel like one. If you focus on your work in those times when you’ve allocated to work, you will rise whatever hierarchy you are trying to climb. The reality is, most other people don’t work when they are supposed to work. They spend all their time at work trying not to work. Work is a habit – one that ought to be nurtured, whatever your industry.

  • Read for work

Reading is on this list twice because I like to read two books at once. My daily goal is to read 50 pages of each book (100 pages total) each day. If I read during the daytime, it is generally a book I am reading for work. Now, this is usually a book on agriculture or on business. In previous lives, it has been politics, economics, or technology. If you read in your field, you will rise close to the top of your field. It’s as simple as that.

  • Post

I hate social media, but I know that this hatred is unhealthy. If you are posting more than you consume, and if your consumption is conscious, educational and community-constructing, then social media is the best thing that has ever happened to humanity. Unfortunately, the Western cultural moment is one of consumption and our social media experience often reflects that. Nothing stops you from bucking that trend, which is why I have this as a daily habit.

Night:

  • Recap journal

Journal in the morning helps to set up the day. Journaling at night helps to set up your life. Daily reflection on how your day went is helpful, like a daily audit on yourself. The themes that came into your mind throughout the day can go on paper (or screen). The problems that you’re having can be externalised. Sometimes free-form writing is the answer to work through these things, but if that’s not necessary, I do something like my morning journal: recap, vision, gratitude, and goals. This also tends to trigger the other routines that set up good sleep.

  • Meditate

I try to do this in the morning, too, but I believe it to be most important at night. It settles your mind. This meditation often comes in the form of prayer – an expression of gratitude, working through problems, asking for forgiveness. Any expression which allows you to focus on a greater being is helpful.

  • Read for me

This is usually a self-help book. If I want to take notes on a book, I will do this before my journaling and meditation so that I can keep the lights on. Otherwise, I will read my Kindle in bed. These concepts, especially being taken in right before bed, will set up the next day. They will allow you to wake up fresher. I’ve heard of people reading first thing in the morning as an “eat that frog”, but I enjoy reading so I don’t mind where it sits in my day.

Bonus:

  • Sleep

This is the lubricant for all these habits. If you don’t get enough sleep, you won’t have enough focus to do any of these things. People need different amounts, but we all need some. Listen to your body, find your sleep routine and stick to it. I heard somewhere that consistent wake time is more important that consistent sleep time. Somewhere around 6.30 seems to do it for me right now.

Hopefully you enjoyed this expression of my ideal day. I wrote all these as if I do them right now, but that is not accurate. These are all things that I have done consistently for a period, sometimes all at once for long stretches, but that time is not necessarily right now. In fact, none of these have been consistent for me for some weeks. That’s precisely why I wrote this piece – to refresh these concepts and try to build back this routine.