Free Spirited Routines?

          It took me years to discover, or at least admit, the value of routines. As you have surely picked up on if you read us regularly, I am pretty much a free spirit. I like being free to choose what, where and when to do what I want to do. I don’t like being a slave to a clock or to a schedule. Or maybe a people person is a better description. I rarely turn down an opportunity to spend time with others. Every one of my grown children know that I will stop what I’m doing to have a conversation with them. They need only skype or call and I’ll make the time to chat or talk. Only occasionally do I tell them I’m busy and need to talk later.

          The peace to do that, though, came only once I embraced the structure imposed on me (some self-imposed, most life/husband/others-imposed). I think I’m now a fairly disciplined and structured person. (As long as you don’t compare me to my husband . . . or ask him to verify what I just said. LOL) It is because I discovered routines actually make spontaneity easier, more fun and much more guilt-free. Once I realized that, I embraced structure with all the passion of my all-or-nothing personality, even as I’ve bent it to my people-first, spontaneity-loving personality.

          Structure helps me be productive even while feeding my penchant for spontaneity. Routines, the right routines, allow me a freedom not present in an I-can-do-anything-I-want kind of day. When I fashion my daily activities and responsibilities into routines, I can act without thinking, do without a lot of decision-making, create without any guilt. When I fashion those tasks I want to accomplish into steps or actions that are done every day, in the same way, in the same order (although not always at the same time-I’m not a clock watcher), I get more done, I have more fun experiences and I’m much more content. When I jettison my routines, decide to wing-it and take each moment as it comes, I miss so many opportunities and lose facets of enjoyment, even in the creative moments of the day.

          No, I do not like, nor do I do well, when every moment of my day is structured or when I have a lot of time-sensitive activities in a day. I need a balance, a free-flowing, amorphous structure that can change and adapt to my emotions, desires and what’s going on around me. I need a schedule that easily adapts, retains its form even as it flexes to accommodate changes.

          Over the years, I’ve had a lot of such routines. When the children were young and we first started homeschooling, our schoolday started with a bible story, a reading lesson, a math lesson, and story-time. Every day, once the first activity was started, it was easy to do the others. We did much more than those activities, but that was the routine that kept us on track. (That and the weekly routine of getting together with another family for school activities once a week.)

          My morning routine is actually my most established one. Some might even call it a rut. It serves me well, though. I’m not a morning person, not by any stretch or contortion of imagination. When I get out of bed, my mind is still sitting on the edge yawning and stretching. No matter how awake and refreshed I feel. The no-brain-needed routine of makeup, hair and clothes ensures I am ready for the day by the time I leave my bedroom. (I tacked feeding my cats to that routine so the poor things would be sure to get fed. )

          Routines establish a base, a foundation of structure, but they can be as unique as each personality. Just as two houses can have the same floor plan, but look totally different, so routines can be modified and supplemented . Your routines of life will not look like mine. In fact, my husband swears I have no routine. But I am up and dressed every day, the house stays reasonably clean, meals are prepared with regularity, we rarely run out of anything essential to daily life and we always (well almost always) have clean clothes to wear. I engage in multiple volunteer and social activities. I know with one glance at my calendar what new activity I can or cannot add. He is right, though, to look at my days would be to see a lot of activity, much of it unique to the day. That’s the way I like it. Just like the piles on my desk that look like clutter, but whose contents are solidly in my mind, so is the schedule of my daily activities solidly ensconced in productivity-producing routines.

          Most of the time.

          What routines keep you on track? Or maybe you need to create one that will get you making progress during this month of anti-procrastination.