🌱 What Actually is Routine Management

Image by Sora Shimazaki from Pexels

And how it’s fed overrated advice by fitness gurus

If you’re a solopreneur, you’ve probably tried countless strategies, hacks, and “tricks” to manage your day along with countless software.

If you haven’t, you’re lucky.

The thing is, your routine is the base for your day. It’s how all your tasks, activities, family and meal times are organized around.

Making it an important thing to get right!

Especially as you’re building your solo biz full of adrenaline from leaving (or planning to leave) your 9–5, there are several myths that are easy to fall into.

Some of these containing “tricks” and strategies that, well, do more harm than good.

You may have heard of the following:

- Exercise right when you get up
- Drink a glass of water in the morning
- …

While some of these are practical to include in your morning routine — they don’t help everyone.

As a solopreneur myself studying remotely, I’ve realized how these strategies have affected me & why I needed a routine that helps me according to my needs.

So what are some tried-and-true ways to organize your routine?

That’s what we’ll get into.

Hopefully by the end of this story, you’ll realize simple ways to incorporate as a routine that will help your productivity, rather than incorporating overcomplicated strategies designed by a “know it all” fitness guru.

You work for yourself

And with that only you can decide how to fit a task into your day.

Someone on Instagram may say, “Do exercise in the mornings!” But if you’re a night time side hustler, that advice doesn’t work well, huh?

So what you need is a guideline to follow that works for you, rather than only actionable tips that are a 1-time application.

Also, if you’re a night owl you can flip this guideline on its head.

Mornings — Find time to chill, refuel, and energize for the day. Spend time on deep focus work.
Afternoons — Refuel to get through the midday lag, and work on your tasks.
Evenings — Slow down, have your meal times, do a light work activity.

This is only a guideline, so how you fill it depends on your tasks!

One pattern you may notice from this is my use of “deep focus work” and “light work,” which resembles your energy levels at the time of doing a task.

Sameness never works

For me personally, I cannot chill in the mornings.

Sure, when I first wake up and write. But after that I need to run around outside to get my body moving.

Whether you feel the same as me or not, here’s why this helped me.

Getting outside and moving helps me to run off all the sleepiness chemicals I’ve accumulated and turn them into energy to get through my day.

To do this, I often:

- Wake up and start writing
- Get breakfast
- Go outside and move

Note that I don’t grab breakfast immediately after I wake up, I use the energy I have left over from sleep to work & then have breakfast to exercise.

But I didn’t always used to do this.

In fact, I would often get breakfast right after I woke up and then get to work.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was not being my most productive self with this routine. I was jet-lagged, blaming it on coffee, and the etc.

So often, I can’t just “chill” in the mornings, unless I have little energy.

You may be different and need to read in the mornings for awhile in order to feel energized, this is why following guidelines for our routinely needs is so important.

Actually actionable advice

The same strategies and “tricks” said by fitness gurus don’t work for everyone, we know.

But where can we find advice that is accurate and actually works for you personally?

In your own notes

Often if you have a journal, diary, or even if you note take daily, you’ll find something you wrote worked for you then that you can compare to what’s working for you today.

Comparing between old & new routine changes helps you understand much more than just how much time you have, but your:

- Tasks that you’re doing
- How you’re feeling during the day
- If you’re meal or bedtimes changed

These can become useful to consider in knowing what works for your routine!

Using a system

Many people use Monday… Notion… Obsidian and more.

Finding a place to not only take notes to compare your routine, but also to track specific details may be just the thing you need if you’re lacking organization.

Not only can you track what I mentioned, but also:

- Habits
- A timeline of your to-do’s
- Linking your fitness days to different meals

And the list goes on!

I love using Notion for these things. But like anything, chose a solution for you.

If you are still in total agreement with fitness gurus, realize this one thing: These people do not know you personally.

They can say all they want about case studies and the such, but if you’re trying to lose weight & needing a routine to help with that — they don’t know you to tell you.

Being mindful on your own is always going to work, but also finding the right people who want to help you by understanding your needs.

Sticking to the same old advice that countless other influencers have said is only stopping you from growing.

So let’s get our day on the right track by planning ahead of time for our individual needs!

Liked this article? You’ll enjoy my newsletter all about routine building, which features bite-sized strategies on managing your routine as a solopreneur.