I’ve been experimenting with something kind of crazy lately: exercising in the middle of the day. What?! you might say. People usually exercise in the morning or the afternoon (although there are those who exercise in their lunch break instead of having lunch). I usually also prefer the afternoon for exercise, but hear me out…
Recently, I experienced some neck and back issues that tended to get worse the longer I remained sitting. Now, I work at my desk, so that’s kind of unavoidable. “How can I break up the periods of sitting?” I wondered. I began by looking at what my typical day looked like: identify the problem.
A typical day
Here’s what a typical day looks like for me. In the morning, I walk to daycare with William and then back home. It’s nice to start the day with a walk outside, and I’m glad I have this opportunity. Then, I come home and sit at my desk for the whole morning. I take brief breaks, but in the end I still spend about 3 hours sitting.
The previous evening sets us up for the day ahead. I described extensively what I do on a typical evening here, and now I’ll talk about my mornings.
The funny thing is that my morning routine is much shorter than the evening routine. The latter is elaborate, with many moving parts, while the former is rather straightforward. Anyway, I’ll walk you through it.
Wake up 30 minutes before my son
This has been key. I used to wake up at the same time as William, and that felt stressful even though I didn’t realize it so explicitly. I was trying to take care of his needs while also taking care of my own, which often led to frustration on both sides: he wanted me to cuddle him, but I just wanted to pee!
A good evening routine would set me up for a restful night of sleep and a good next day.
I wanted to create a realistic and stress-free (as much as possible) evening routine, so I had to leave enough time for everything I wanted and needed to do. I hate to be pressed for time in the evening when I’m tired and trying to wind down! Sometimes it still happens, and it’s oh-so annoying.
My evening routine starts early
I figured out that the evening routine starts as early as 17:00 (5 pm) when I leave to pick up William from daycare. I could pick him up anytime before 18:00 (6 pm), but if I leave later than 17:00 (5 pm), I just end up being too late for everything else, and I then have to rush. So I do my best to finish up my work, get ready, and leave on time.
I was inspired by Adele’s song Easy on Me. In my case, I need to go easy on myself.
I don’t really like going easy. I’m good at going hard and pushing through until I get results. This approach has worked well for me for a while.
Recently, I had a serious neck problem and frequent headaches, and I’ve been unable to get good sleep, which just made me more tired overall. Therefore, I had to really slow down and rest. It’s not nice, but it had to be done.
The truth is that I don’t like resting very much. It’s boring! What’s so enjoyable about lying there and doing nothing? I want to be doing stuff, to be excited, and to be experiencing new things. I don’t like being bored. (Or maybe I’m just doing resting wrong? Let me know.)
But I’ve heard of countless successful people who pushed too hard, had a burnout, and then had to reinvent their lives. I didn’t want to do that. Burnout may be inevitable sometimes, but I was actually aware of the fact that I needed to slow down before things became fully disastrous. With awareness and knowledge comes responsibility, so I sighed deeply and actually started taking breaks…
Over time, my neck problems and my headaches have begun to subside, but I still need to remember to take it easy. It is too easy to forget and go full speed again, only to hit the same roadblocks again.
Another trick I’m aiming to implement is to allow for transition time between activities. Often I run from one activity to the next, making sure my day is maximally productive and jam-packed. But that means I tend to be stressed about running late and cannot allow myself to take an extra minute or two if needed.
Unfortunately, this means I may be snappy or irritated with my closest people, usually my husband and my son. This isn’t nice for anybody, and I’d rather be more at ease in order to bring a more peaceful energy to our home.
So I’ll try to build in transition time (5 to 10 minutes) between activities as well as underplan my day as a whole. Think I can do these three tasks in an hour? Plan on doing two. Expect this task to take two hours to complete? Plan for two and a half.
As much as I don’t like going easy, that is what I’ll be aiming to do this year. I’ll allow myself time to rest, I’ll underplan my days/weeks/months, and I’ll allow for transition time.
In the previous two weeks, I wrote about identifying your unique priorities and creating goals in order to make those priorities a reality. Now, it’s time to get very specific and identify tasks that will allow you to reach your goals, so you can live according to your priorities.
Once you identify important goals in your life, it’s time to break them down into actionable steps. What tasks can bring you closer to your goal?
If you want to learn to play piano, a suitable aim may be to play piano 3 times per week for 30 minutes. If you want to spend more time with friends, you can make it a goal to meet up with a friend for dinner or lunch once a week. Then, go ahead and make arrangements with your friends to that end. The key here is to make the steps actionable, so it’s clear what you need to do to move closer to your goal.
Next, you should put the action you’ve identified on your calendar and/or to-do list. Put it somewhere where you won’t forget about the activity, you’ll be reminded of it, and you’ll be able to review it. My calendar and my to-do list (both digital) are my best friends in this regard because they are always by my side (on my phone).
It’s very important to be practical and to plan your activities in detail. Multiple studies have shown the “when, then” approach extremely effective in modifying behavior: for instance, “when I come home from work, I will play piano for 30 minutes. Thus, identify when exactly you will do your new behavior, and decide on what exactly you will do. Be as specific as possible.
We should aim to break down our big goals into small, manageable steps and plan when and how we will carry those out. This is the way to make our goals happen.
Last week, I wrote about how you can identify what’s truly important to you in your life. Now, let’s get specific, so we can make your vision a reality.
Now that you’ve reflected on the main categories of your life, we’re going to set goals to reflect where you’d like to be regarding each category.
In some of these areas, you may already be living life as you’d like it to be, and in other areas, there may be a mismatch between what you’d like your life to look like and what it currently is. In this exercise, you’ll gain awareness of where you are now and where you’d like to be.
What goals and projects (activities, responsibilities, things you do) do you have in each category?
Do you feel fulfilled by the combination of goals and projects listed here? Does the list feel “complete”?
In an ideal world, would you remove any goals and/or projects from this category, i.e., would you take anything off your list?
In an ideal world, would you add any goals and/or projects to this list? Is there anything that you feel is missing that you’d like to add?
Run through this exercise for each of the 10 priorities categories. You’re finished when each category feels fulfilling to you.
Now, try to take in the 10 categories together. Do they make for a fulfilling, purposeful life? It may be difficult to hold everything you’ve written in mind at the same time, but allow your gut feeling to guide you here. Does your intuition tell you something is missing? Or does this feel like a pretty good life?
One of the biggest stressors in an otherwise fortunate life is to not be living the life you want. It may sound like your life is great, but unless it reflects your idea of what’s important, it may not feel fulfilling to you.
But how can you identify your unique priorities? There are so many things to think about and so many things you find important in life, you may not even know where to start.
In order to make identifying your priorities feel less overwhelming, I invite you to consider the main categories of your life:
Work & Mission
Learning
Finances
Health
Family
Friends
Care
Relaxing & Fun
Spirituality
Purpose & Fulfillment
What is important to you in each category? What would you like to add in (some of) these categories to make them feel more in alignment with how you’d like to live your life?
What responsibilities are you carrying in (some of) these categories that do not feel authentic to you? Are you able to spend less time on those, delegate them to someone else, or simply not do them? What can you remove from your life, so you can have more time and energy for what matters to you?
Note: These 10 main categories of life are loosely based on Brendon Burchard‘s work, but the ones listed here have been adapted by me.
We got a white board at home. Oh, the joy! Jacob wanted to get it because he thought he’d need it for work. I was trying to hide my enthusiasm as he was ordering it, and I didn’t tell him I’d be taking over it, haha!
We’ve needed something like this for a long time. We do our family planning in our shared google calendar and our shared lists on To Do, but we noticed we needed some sort of visual reminder in our home about some specific home tasks.
We’re also making an effort to spend less time on our phones when we’re having family time in the evenings, so we can’t see reminders on our phones and can’t check our calendar or to do list. Once we’re finished with work and we’re home with William for the evening, our phones go in the Phone Box. We take them out if we actually need them, but then we put them right back in the box. This avoids mindless scrolling on the phone when we could in fact be connecting as a family.
This is our phone box.
This is where the white board comes in
There are two columns on the white board: ‘Tasks J’ and ‘Tasks M.’ We can each put tasks underneath each column, which gives us the ability to assign each other tasks and give each other reminders without nagging–this is key!
For instance, I am in charge of the food menu, so I know what needs to be cooked each day. We also buy lots of frozen foods (meat, fish, fruits, and vegetables) because they tend to be cheaper for the same or even more nutrients than the conventional options. The evening before we’re going to cook something, I think about what needs to be defrosted, and I put it on Jacob’s tasks. (Jacob is in charge of defrosting stuff because he’s very good with packing stuff in the freezer, and he has a special system for what goes where. Clearly, I’m not the only organization nerd in our house.)
An example of what our white board looked like this Thursday.
Why don’t I just tell Jacob what he needs to defrost, you may ask? Haha. Are you married or living with someone, I’d ask? Often when I tell him to do something, he may not want to do it, he may be in the middle of something else, or he may not even be home from work yet. It’s so much easier to put the reminder or task in an external holding space, so I don’t have to do any reminding or nagging myself.
So when Jacob is home and is ready to deal with the tasks for that evening, he checks the white board and then does them in his own time. The other most common tasks for him on the board are, ‘Empty trash’ and ‘Cook sweet potatoes’ (he’s the sweet potato master!).
Funny enough, he doesn’t write down tasks for me very often. Usually, he apps me a request for something, and I put it on my to do list or on the board. That’s just how it goes. I look forward to the day when he puts a task on my white board list though!
By the way, William also wanted to have his own column for tasks he needs to do. So I made him a column with tasks such as, ‘Play,’ ‘Tidy up,’ and ‘Clean’ (he loves cleaning with a handheld vacuum cleaner). Let’s see how long this fascination lasts.
Naturally, William also loves drawing on the white board, but yesterday he ended up drawing on the wall underneath the white board as well. Clearly, there are drawbacks to using a white board…
Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve been doing daily planning on paper. Dan-dan-daaaaaaan!
Why so low-tech, you may ask, when I usually use digital tools? And that is a good question indeed.
The digital tools I use
I use a digital list tool (currently Microsoft To Do) to keep track of my lists, for instance:
A screenshot of my list tool.
And I also use Trello to keep track of my workflow or of big projects such as clutter clearing and renovations:
An excerpt of my Home Trello board.
These are all super useful, and I will not stop using them. But there’s also a different use for paper planning…
Daily planning on paper
Some months ago, I felt the need to do a brain dump on paper. I’d wake up in the morning and have all kinds of thoughts swimming through my mind:
“I’m working on my website today.”
“And I need to do a load of laundry.”
“Oh, and I should start the beef in the instant pot.”
“And I need to order throat spray for William.”
“I really shouldn’t forget to…”
And on an on. Since I’ve been working at home, this has become even more of an issue because everything happens in the same space, and I can potentially do all these tasks at any time in the day. After a while of this, I knew I needed a change.
I bought pretty daily planning paper and began to write down all my tasks for the day on there.
I created a little ritual where I’d sit down after breakfast with my calendar and my to-do list and plan the day out on paper. Then, as I completed each task throughout the day, I’d check it off. It ended up being very pretty.
Why not do it digitally?
Now, you may point out that you can do this easily in any online list tool, and you’d be correct. For instance, Microsoft To Do has a nice ‘My Day’ function that I could have used.
But I had this strange need to do this on paper. I wanted to be able to walk past my desk throughout the day and glance at my list and check off items.
I’m also trying to spend less time on my phone. Every time I checked my list on my phone meant that I was holding my phone in my hand and could easily check my messages, email, etc. I’m making an active effort to do this less often, so it made sense that I’d avoid my phone when possible.
I also love planning on paper. I wish I could use a paper agenda with its beautiful pictures and fancy paper, but it is so much less convenient than an online calendar that I doubt I’ll ever go back to it, alas. But the daily planning on paper actually offers me some benefits and feels slightly decadent.
Do I do this every day?
I did do it every day at first but not anymore. Sometimes it feels repetitive, and then I don’t do it. If the day is mostly a work day, I have my work tasks on Trello, and I’m spending most of my day on the computer anyway, so I have no use for a paper version.
An excerpt of my Work Trello board for this week.
But on a day when I’m mostly doing housework and activities with William (Thursday and Sunday for me), I don’t spend much time on my phone or computer. In those cases, I use my daily planning, and it allows for a lot of flexibility. This past Sunday, for instance, it looked like this:
My daily planning last Sunday morning.
After a while, William found it, and then it had ‘drawings’ all over it. He really enjoys drawing on my fancy planning paper:
William joins the daily planning process.
Anyway, we both had fun, so it was good!
Do you prefer to plan your day using digital tools or paper?
A Good Life 