Josh Griffiths

I Never Realized How Important A Daily Routine Is

It’s been a difficult year. For everyone, of course, and that includes myself. If there’s one thing I learned in all this tumult, it’s that I value a daily routine. Yes, that is my big take away from tragedy. I wonder what that says about me?

For many years I didn’t have a daily routine. My only semblance of normalcy, the only thing bolting me to the world was that each morning, as soon as I woke up, I’d grab my tablet, a cup of coffee, and sit on my tiny balcony and read the news. From there, I spent the days drifting from project to project, chore to chore, job to job. I’ve always had part-time jobs, “real” jobs to stabilize my income when my writing wasn’t paying the bills. Because of this, I’d work different shifts everyday. Different times, different lengths, sometimes even different locations. I thought this meant any hope of a daily routine was but a pipe dream. But I also thought I didn’t need one, since I was getting along so well without it.

Before, my only daily routine was when I was in school. Like everyone, I’d stay up way too late at night, wake up too early for how little sleep I got, rush to class, come home and study, eat, goof around for a few hours, and do it all over again. I was bored of it at the time, but I realize now that it stabilized my life. I knew what I had to do at all times. Sure, I could ignore it, skip school or not do homework, but I knew exactly what I was doing and was prepared to live with the consequences.

After school, including college, I found myself mostly self-employed and freelancing. I had deadlines, but not a schedule per se. Work that was due on set days, but not an assigned set of tasks I had to accomplish each day in a certain order.

I figured I’d work when I wanted, as often or as little as I wanted, and it didn’t matter as long as I got the work done on time. And for while, that’s how I operated. Some days I would work ten hours a day. Some only one or two. Some not at all. I found I often lost motivation, resulting in putting off projects until the last second, in which case I had to do a mad dash to get it done on time, which in turn resulted in sloppy work. The more this happened, the worse my work got, and the fewer gigs I landed. I lost even more motivation, and doing even less work. This downward spiral lasted years, and I barely even realized what was happening.

It all came to a head earlier this year. I haven’t had a freelance writing gig in years. My YouTube channel was losing views, each video attracting fewer and fewer eyes. That entire side of my income had dried up, and I felt awful, like a failure. I decided to give up that stage of my life, retiring from article writing and video production, and refocus on my fiction writing, which I hadn't done since college. I'd also refocus on my day job, on finding a new and better one.

But this didn’t solve my problems overnight. I still struggled with motivation for months. I found a new motivation, getting back to fiction, but I still wrote whenever I wanted and had time. I was back to writing ten hours one day, none the next.

I was coming off another one of these massive work days and was actually feeling proud of myself for once, for getting so much done after spending the previous week sitting on my ass. And that’s when it hit me: what if I just repeat this day? Do exactly the same things I did, in the same order, for the same amount of time. And it worked. For five days in a row, I worked for hours (in between my day job) on blogs, short stories, and my book. I accomplished more than I had in years in those five days, and I was feeling great. I thought I was on to some great new life hack, but I realized I was just a tech bro who invented something that already existed – the daily schedule.

I realized the amount of work I was doing each day wasn’t sustainable, so I scaled back how much I work on my writing projects, especially on days I have to go to my day job. But I’ve been sticking to this schedule for over a month now and I still feel great.

The schedule, if you’re interested, is roughly like this on days I don’t go to work:

It’s not super strict, as you can probably tell. I don’t plan everything down to the minute, or even the hour. I tried something like that at first but found it far too restrictive. Something looser like this lets me get plenty of work done while still just as much time to relax and unwind. I find I’m at my best as a writer when I end the day feeling like I could still work for another hour or two, but stop myself. This gives me something to look forward to the next day without burning myself out. But if I’m in a really good mood, I can allow myself to write a little longer. Or if I’m not feeling so hot, I can ease back while still getting some work done.

I think a big part of this process is learning my limits, when to push them, and when to ease back. You’d think that at 33 I’d know myself pretty well, but I’ve always been a private person with myself.

written by humans