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  • Do routines help or hinder your productivity?

    Joshua Wöhle
    5 replies
    Why do so many people have a negative view of routines? I believe they are essential for our mental well-being, prioritisation, and habit-building. 🧠 Routines help us take charge of our mental wellbeing Going through the most challenging period of my life, a high school psychologist helped me climb out of the pit I was in. She told me to take 1 minute each day to rate how I felt and write down what I had done. Over time, it made me understand what differentiated good from bad days. It gave me a tool to take ownership of my own well-being and became the foundation of my approach to routines today. ❗Routines help us prioritise Many of life's biggest decisions come from how we allocate our time. When we leave every day to chance, it's hard to prioritise what we say is important to us. With a clear routine, we can easily shift time from one area of our life (like work or exercise) to another (like spending time with our kids or reading). Routines provide a framework for prioritising the things we care about. I regularly review my routines and ask myself if I'm happy with the trade-offs I'm making. Do I spend enough time with my family? Do I make time to learn? If not, I adjust my routines. 🛠 Routines help us build habits Habit stacking is a proven way to make habit-building easier, and routines provide multiple "triggers" for stacking new habits. Start your routine with a daily walk? Tag a minute of reflection onto it. End your day reading a book? Add a minute of gratefulness. Those are just 2 of my own examples. In his book Atomic Habits, James Clear says, "You don't rise to the level of your ambitions. You fall to the level of your systems." I couldn't agree more. What do you think? Do you see the value in routines?

    Replies

    Dhoorjati Varma
    I feel routines are very valuable as well. There's a good quote I read somewhere, which sums up my thoughts: Discipline and Freedom are not mutually exclusive.
    Anne Broadwin
    Routines help me to complete routine tasks more efficiently, thus spare time for me to think about more creative things
    Rhymer Espinosa
    Routines absolutely help. It helps finish the job/task efficiently and improves productivity. The only time it would hinder us is if we depend too much on it, and that changes in the routine become a challenge. (like Sheldon Cooper).
    Joshua Wöhle
    @rimer_carlyle_espinosa Love Sheldon's example - agreed that's not the type of routine that adds to your life :)
    Shon Paunan
    Sometimes it does help 'coz it helps you be on track