Slave to the rhythm

Routines are a powerful part of your toolbox. If you want to do something at a regular interval, build a routine that has that activity in it. If you do this well, you’ll never forget it again because the routine will feel incomplete.

Designing routines

One of my routines has been an early morning routine. I woke up at 5am, got out of bed quietly, went downstairs, made coffee, and fired up the laptop to write a blog post.

I often think back at that time, because it was one of the more productive routines I have had in recent times. But I have abandoned that routine, since it did not fit into my context anymore. My early morning routine was very much atuned to the sleeping rhythms of my wife and toddler. The patterns changed and so did my routines.

I haven’t been creating new routines however. In hindsight though, consciously redesigning routines may have been a smart idea.

One of the things that dropped out of my routines was writing blog posts. I found time to write them, but never again in the same rhythm as when I had a steady routine that incorporated them. And then there was another change. We got pregnant again. And my wife’s body is not happy to be pregnant…

Necessary routine emerged

So a new morning routine emerged. A routine where our son will wake us early in the morning, I get him out of bed and take him downstairs, I make breakfast for my wife and she eats it in bed, I make breakfast for my son and myself. Without boring you with all the details…the routine takes me to my day job and is filled with caring for my family. Waking up early has been out of the question for a while, due to irregular sleeping rhythms.

This routine has grown out of necessity, and is very effective in achieving a good start to regular days. Besides being a necessity it also serves one of my core values, Love, since caring for your family to me is a way to shape love in a practical form on a daily basis. It does not serve any of my other goals though, and that thought has been nagging me.

Time to be proactive

It’s time to take control again, to be proactive and start designing new routines. Things are easing up on a family level, my wife (thankfully) is slowly starting to come back to ‘normal life’. At the same time I realize that in a couple of months time, a baby will throw things around again. So being proactive is going to be a major focus.

Starting to write again

I have missed writing on my blog, but it also surprised me how easy it became not to write. I was kind of habitually not writing. And then this feeling emerges that you need to make that comeback with a bang, the killer post. That sure is a reason to procrastinate some more (I’m not the only one dealing with this though).

But that, of course, is hardly a rational thought.
So here it is: I’m back at writing.
I enjoyed it.
I hope you will.

Posted in 15 bean soup on Mon 2009.01.12