About This Episode

In today’s episode, we will look at how you can be more consistent in your daily routines. As I mentioned repeatedly, daily routines are essential for getting some more freedom in your life. The reason why routines are important is so that you will have an allocation of your time for things that you want to do more of.

THE BENEFITS OF CREATING A CONSISTENT ROUTINE

Your daily routine influences your quality of rest. Your sleep schedule and bedtime habits affect your mental sharpness, performance, emotional well-being, and energy level. Therefore it is best if you can maintain a consistent time for waking and going to bed.

And also, you need to build consistency around your routine. This is so that you will be much more efficient, reduces your need to plan again and again. Routines also create structures in our life and time, which are our most valuable resources.

Creating routines can also help us break bad habits and helps us get the most important tasks done every day, and prioritize whatever we have to do each day.

And it reduces the need for willpower, reduces procrastination, builds momentum, and, with consistency in creating good habits, builds your self-confidence.

Not only that, creating routines helps you to save money, reduces stress, and so much more benefits that I can go on and on.

There are so many good things and so many benefits of creating a good routine every day. And most importantly, it helps us to achieve our goals.

Therefore, this post will look at how you can be more consistent in your routine.

Before we get into the tips on how you can create a consistent routine without even thinking about it, you have to nail down your current routine first.

NAIL DOWN YOUR CURRENT ROUTINE

You have to know what your current is and what routine you want to create. So, the first step is to write the routine you are doing right now clearly.

And after that, write what you want to build.

You can start with whatever works for you that you have been doing. Then, layer a new habit on top of what’s have been working out well in your life.

I’ll share with you my morning routine to give you some idea of how I layer new habits on top of the routines that are already working well in my life.

For example, in my morning routine, I have been waking up consistently at 5:30 am every day for the last five years and sleep quite early to get my total of 7 to 8 hours of sleep.

After waking up, I brush my teeth, and then I pray Tahajjud (which is what I have been trying to do more often now), and then I’ll wait for the Subuh Prayer, then after that recite two pages of the Quran with translation.

ADD A NEW HABIT AFTER NAILING DOWN THE PREVIOUS ONE

Layering a new good habit when you have nailed down the current routine is important because it avoids feeling overwhelmed. You don’t do all of that at once.

You know, to be honest for me, it took me maybe two years to make this a habit. Up till now, Alhamdulillah, I have been waking up at 5:30 am every day for the last maybe five to six years.

So it is pretty easy for me to do because it has become automatic for me to wake up at 5:30 am, even sometimes without the alarm clock. So you know, sometimes I kind of feel like I want to sleep a bit longer, maybe wake up at 6:30 once in a while, but I couldn’t because my brain already know that it’s not normal for me to sleep that long.

And I can add some more new things if I want to, after doing something that I have been doing, like after my Subuh prayer and reciting Quran.

So, for example, after Subuh, I read the Quran, and I always try to start my day with gratitude journaling or reading. Then, it is just about time for the kids to wake up, so I prepare breakfast and prep them for either going to school or homeschooling or whatever other things I need to do.

The first important thing here is to nail down your current habit and lay new patterns on top of it, one practice at a time.

Think of what you have been doing right now that is working for you. You can then tweak it a little bit by adding something small that you feel like doing. For example, maybe you want to drink two glasses of water in the morning before eating breakfast.

So, just put that after whatever you have been doing. Maybe after you brush your teeth, you go directly into the kitchen, and you just quickly drink two glasses of water.

1) CREATE HABIT SEQUENCE

The sequence is also important because it helps you not have a second thought or change your mind when you begin to have that mental resistance.

By developing the new habits, your body will start to create new behaviours, and then every day, you don’t need to remember that you have to drink a glass of water because when the habit is instilled in you, it becomes easier. Try in at least 21 days because it takes at least 21 days to develop a new habit.

2) TRY IT FOR AT LEAST 21 DAYS

Track the new habit on a habit tracker to make sure that you consistently do it. And after it becomes second nature, you can add new patterns that you want to create. So having that concise structure helps your mind know that after specific tasks, you already have the next one after a particular habit that you want to do. You have the following sequence in which you are going to do. So your body automatically will do it without even starting to second-guessing whether you should do it or not.

3) CREATING REWARDS & GIVE THEM IMMEDIATELY AFTER YOUR NEW HABIT

The next tip is to connect a reward to your daily achievements. I think rewarding yourself is the best way to keep encouraging yourself to build consistency and achieve anything that you want in your life. For example, maybe you want to start reading two pages of Al-Quran in the morning every day. And you want to nail down the routine. So after prayer, you read the Quran for two pages. You can then reward yourself maybe with a bit of a fancy coffee after that or with anything you find rewarding. I must be something that also now sabotaging your goals. What I’m saying is that if your goal is to lose weight, don’t reward yourself with sweet desserts or more food because then you’ll start to associate food with reward, and it’s not going to help you to lose weight.

Therefore, choose what’s a suitable mini-daily reward that you can give to yourself. Honestly, I am trying to do a consistent 30 minutes cardio workout at home now 3-4 times every week. My reward is that after the cardio, I’ll give myself 5 minutes on the Yoga Mat to breathe. That’s the best reward ever to me. It may sound weird to you. But trust me, giving just that 3-5 minutes for breathwork is so calming and helped me a lot over these years. That has been my go-to mini-daily reward for the past few years. Maybe I’ll do a whole episode on breathwork someday.

But as for now, create your min-reward and give yourself that reward immediately after you’ve done making the new habit.

4) TAKE AT LEAST A DOSE OF INSPIRATION DAILY

Take at least a dose of inspiration daily. It can be like listening to a motivational podcast like what you are doing right now, right. Some might prefer to read books; self-help books are good. Find one that suits your current interest. I like to read 2-3 books at once. What this means is that I don’t read one non-fictional book, one at a time. Because sometimes, I need time to process the information or implement them in my life. Thus, I like to move on to the next chapter if the book is quite heavy to digest.

It’s like the analogy of “How do you eat an elephant?”… You eat it, one bite at a time. So a small dose of inspiration is essential to cultivate consistency in your routine—one motivation at a time.

5) TRACK YOUR PROGRESS

So that leads us to the next tip on being consistent in your routine is to check your progress physically. You can use habit trackers, and many apps are developed for this purpose. You can either track your progress on your handphone or using a desktop version. Or you can print it out and hang it somewhere that you can see every day. Or the easiest way is that for me, it is just striking it on my calendar in my daily planner. Focus on one new habit at a time. For me, right now would be my workout habits.

When I was in Japan, it was not that hard to hit my 10,000 steps target almost every day because I cycle 3 km one-way to the university or walk 3 km in total every day to the train station, then take the train to the campus. But now, since we’re working at home, hitting that 10,000 steps every day rarely happens naturally. I need to find a way to move my body.

Therefore right now, I’m trying to nail down my workout habits. I’m trying to work out every day for 30 minutes, at least four times a week. That is the new thing that I’m trying to incorporate in right now. So when I finish work around 5 pm, after settling down a little bit and preparing a quick dinner, I quickly switch on the YouTube video to work out with my favourite fitness instructor on YouTube. I have a couple of favourites, so you guys who are trying to work out from home, definitely try a couple of videos on YouTube and see which style of workout suits you best. I track my progress. At first, I would only work out for 15 minutes, and I got tired quickly. And now I’m able to increase to 30 minutes 3-4 times per work. Remember to start small and work your way up to build consistency.

6) TRAIN YOUR FEELINGS TO FOCUS ON THE GORGEOUS END INSTEAD OF THE MESSY MIDDLE

Next is to train your feelings to focus on the end, which is rewarding and gorgeous, instead of the messy middle. So when you’re starting a new habit, maybe you have some motivation and the excitement of trying new things. But in the middle, it gets a bit messy, and you start to feel resistance. Instead of overthinking about that messy middle, focusing your feelings to the end.

So back to the workout analogy. Suppose you were able to work out every day consistently. What kind of energy that you would have? What type of body will you eventually accomplish right as the result of you doing the work consistently? So think about that instead.

7) TIME-BLOCK!

The last tip is to stop stretching the task or the new habit you want to do by feeding it more of your time. Create a time block for it. Again, back to the workout routine that I’ve mentioned just now, right? Instead of dragging it and thinking, whether or not you should be doing it, procrastinating on whether to do it is not going to help. When you are not blocking the time, you will start making excuses that you don’t have time for it.

Create the time-block for the new habit, then create a routine that helps to make this time block a success. For me, I must get a quick dinner ready; then I work out. Because this allows me to focus and push myself during the workout becomes more manageable knowing that I’ve already prepared dinner. And to be able to prepare dinner quickly, I’ve developed a weekly meal plan and prep routine that helps me stress less and prepare healthy meals for the family every day. InsyaAllah.

If you want the meal planner template that I’ve used, which helps me control my calorie intake and plan what to buy on groceries day, you can download below.

In conclusion, creating a routine helps promote health and wellness through structure and organization. Having a routine can significantly improve your health. Everyone is unique. Not everyone requires a fully scheduled day to reap the health benefits of a routine, so make the choices that work for you, knowing they’ll only make you healthier and more efficient with your time.

That’s all for today.

Remember to start your day with intention, pursue what you love doing, and end your day with gratitude. 

I’ll see you next week.

Assalamualaikum.

If you like to improve your productivity fast, check out this episode next:

6 PRODUCTIVITY TIPS FROM A PRO

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