Have you ever wondered how to create a daily routine? The kind or routine that will lead you to better habits? When I began being more conscious about my daily routine and habits, I noticed the small things (and sometimes the big ones) kept leading me back to bad habits. Even though I would set off with the best intentions to perform my new habits, it was too easy to fall back into a bad groove.
For example, if I wanted to work out for thirty minutes a day as part of my new daily routine, I would allow excuses to creep in and distract me. I’d eat a big meal and slack off, telling myself I’d do it tomorrow. Or, I would hit the snooze button on my alarm and wake up in a rush to get ready for work, not allowing me the time in the morning to exercise.
I quickly realised I needed to create a daily routine so I could map out my week and give myself the best chance of creating better habits. I found that if I kept consistent, results would come with whatever I was doing. But if I made excuses, things would only stay the same. That’s why I’m so passionate about adding small, achievable habits every day to improve gradually. When you keep things realistic, you have more chance of being successful. Over time the small things become easier and you can take on even more.
I think this is why creating a daily routine is so difficult for some people – you set off with the best intentions but life sometimes just feels messy and as if it’s pulling you in multiple directions. Sometimes the goals are too big and simply not realistic.
I’m the kind of person that needs a structured routine or I easily slack off from pursuing my goals. In this post, I’ll go over what I think is the best way to create a daily routine for incorporating new habits into your day.
If you like, you can check out my own daily routine example here for some inspiration.
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit,”
Aristotle
The benefits of a daily routine
So why would you even need a daily routine? Here are some of the benefits I have gained from having a more structured daily routine.
- Improved focus
- Improved sleep
- Improved relationships
- Improved mood
- Improved organisation
- Improved health in terms of mental and physical performance
Simply put, when you have a daily routine to follow, life feels less chaotic and more structured giving you that bit more mental clarity.
How to create a daily routine
There are probably many different ways you can create a daily routine for more structure with things like work. However, for me, creating a daily routine is about much more than just productive work, it’s about setting out everything you do in a 24-hour day so you can create a healthier life overall. And if you were to go as far as breaking your day down into hourly chunks, it’s extremely helpful when it comes to finding time for healthier habits, for example.
So, where do you start?
1. Identify the essentials
Your daily routine is going to have essential things that you need to do that are largely fixed in place, things like work or caring for a loved one. I think it’s a good idea when creating a daily routine to first list your essential tasks on any given day so you can identify the time in your day when you have more control over your daily routine. Of course, your weekend will probably look different but for the sake of this exercise, let’s stick with work days where things tend to be more rigid.
Start by jotting down your “essentials”. For example, your list might look something like this;
- Sleep from 10 pm – 6 am (8 hours)
- Work from 9 am – 5 pm (9 hours)
- Visit elderly parent 6 pm – 8 pm)
2. Identify your “free time”
I think one of the reasons why creating daily routines sometimes fails is because life isn’t always as simple as saying “I’ll work out in the morning,” or, “I’ll drink my bulletproof coffee before I leave for work,”
Perhaps you have to rush out in the evening to deal with an emergency or someone visits you as a surprise. However, there will be time slots throughout the day that are pretty much always the same and these are the times when it’ll be easy to make excuses. Once you have identified your daily “essentials” you can find the empty slots or “free time” where you can begin to create your better habits and start building a better daily routine.
For example, your free time would be the time between when you wake up and the time you need to leave for work minus the time you need to get ready for work. Your free time would be the time you have on your lunch break minus the time you spend eating.
And your free time might be from the time you get in from work minus the time you spend getting the kids to bed in the evening. Around that time you can exercise or cook something healthy, for example.
This “free time” might start to look like something like this;
- 6 am – 9 am free time minus the time you get ready for work and the kids ready for school might leave you with 1.5 hours.
- 5 pm – 10 pm in the evening minus the time it takes you to get home from work and the time it takes to get your kids prepared for bed.
In this example, you may find that you have 1.5 hours in the morning which you can add to your daily routine and in the evening, you may have 3 hours. This gives you a daily total amount of 4.5 five hours you could realistically dedicate to new healthy habits in your daily routine.
3. Identify your “wasted time”
If you want to create a daily routine that’s productive, I think it’s helpful to then see where you might have “wasted time” in relation to making progress with your habits. For example, within these 4.5 hours of free time during your work days, you might find you spend a lot of time watching TV or scrolling Instagram that you could put towards one or two of your goals.
I think it’s important to still have time where you can relax but how much time within your “free time” do you use for mindless tasks? For example, I sometimes spend far longer watching TV than I know I should. I know I could be using that time to exercise or read. This is what I class as “wasted time”.
Sometimes that looks like this;
- 30 minutes of mindless scrolling in the evening
- 1 hour of watching TV
When you identify your wasted time within your free time you can begin to find pockets of time where you can realistically begin starting better habits.
4. Identify your priorities
Once you’ve identified your daily essentials within your daily routine, your free time and your wasted time you can start to really think about what you want to prioritise in your daily routine. Because we all have a finite amount of hours each day where it’s realistic to do certain things, we have to choose what we want to spend our time doing.
For example, I can’t learn to be a nutritionist, become a world champion bodybuilder and have the biggest and best blog on the internet all at once. I have to choose a finite amount of things to add to my daily routine to truly focus on – these are the things that are most important to me. Trying to do too many things would quickly burn me out.
Make a list of what you want to realistically achieve in your daily routine. For example, mine might look like this;
- Write 500 words
- Drink 5 large cups of water
- Do 30 minutes of physical activity
- Perform 5 minutes of leg stretches
- Eat my first meal at 11 am
- Eat 5 different plant foods
- Get a protein-rich lunch & dinner
- Cook a healthy dinner from scratch
Once you’ve done this, you can add your daily activities into your daily routine where it makes the most sense.
For example, I would stretch for 5 minutes in the morning each day, drink a glass of water, and drink two more with my lunch and two more in the evening. I would eat my protein-rich lunch at 1 pm, cook my healthy dinner recipe at 6.30 pm and write at least 500 words at 8 pm, etc.
5. Create a timetable
Next, you can create a daily routine by designing a daily timetable to help give you more structure for these habits, day by day.
Because you’ve already identified your daily essential activities, your free time and your “wasted time”, you can now map out your ideal daily routine with ease when it comes to habits.
Download the below daily routine timetable so you can jot in your daily routine by the hour.
Build a daily routine with this FREE daily routine planner
6. Commit to your daily routine
Once you’ve got a good idea of what your daily routine will look like, it’s time to commit to it! With anything new, there’s going to be a degree of some discomfort at first, especially if your new daily schedule is totally different to what you’re used it.
In my experience, there’s no way around this but to simply start! However, if your daily routine is realistic, your daily habits won’t feel like a chore and you’ll be more likely to stick to your new routine. If your new daily routine really is too challenging to stick to, you can always chop a few things out and start at a slower pace.
Make it so damn simple that you will achieve your new habits until you eventually feel like adding in a few more healthy habits! After all, Rome wasn’t built in a day and changing your routine isn’t always easy, especially if you’ve lived a certain way for a long time. Always try to show patience and compassion towards yourself.
Conclusion
Creating a daily routine, especially a brand new one can feel daunting but I believe that if you break your typical day down bit by bit you can get a good picture of what you can do and when. If you’re trying to build new habits into your schedule, having a structure like a timetable can allow you to stay more focused.
Track your daily activities like you would track your daily spending and you’ll be able to find the time in your day when you can go to the gym or study with much more ease. Make the most important things to you non-negotiable and you’ll go from making excuses to finding discipline in whatever you want to do.
If you liked this post read this next to find out how you can develop and stick to your new habits.