Rituals and Routines to help you Get The Work Done

Here’s a good way to Get The Work Done. It’s about routines. Oh silly me, that doesn’t sound very exciting does it?! But give me a minute and I’ll show you that while routines sound boring, they are actually a very fabulous way to Get The Work Done!

 

There’s a great book called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work by Mason Curry. It’s about the rituals that famous artists (in the biggest sense of the word as they include scientists and mathematicians as well as painters and writers)  adopted to Get The Work Done. [It’s a FAB read!] Routines to Get Work Done

 Much of the book is about how these famous ‘artists’ carved out time to do their work. Did you know that many of them (including famous peeps like Anthony Trollope) held down regular full-time day jobs as well as writing, painting and mathematising?

Trollope worked in a Post Office AND was one of England’s most successful, respected and prolific novelists. Gosh. Where did he find the time?!

Well, ok. Trollope probably wasn’t also doing the washing, cooking and looking after the kids, but, still, how did he do it? Simple. He got up early every morning and wrote 3,000 words before going off to work. (Simple, but not easy!)

And that’s the big theme of the book. To get their creative work done, the Artists made their work a daily habit. They stuck to a routine, showed up at the same time every day, and just Did The Work. 

Not exciting, not easy, but it works! 

1 Routines help you find the time!

When you make something a routine you make time for it. Really you do! You don’t wonder if you’re going to have time to brush your teeth tonight, it’s just part of your bedtime routine, you make time to do it!

So if you need to get something done but can’t find the time, try making it into a little routine. When I wrote How to Bake a Business I got up early (make that very early, before my toddlers woke up!) and worked on it for an hour every morning. Once I’d been doing it for a week or so getting up early to write became easy, it was just What I Did!

But routines don’t need to be something that you just do first thing in the morning, or something that’s a big project. They work for anything that you find tricky to fit into your day. Maybe it’s exercise? Maybe it’s reading? Maybe it’s keeping in touch with your network? Whatever it is, you’ll find it easier to make time to do it if you make it a daily routine!

2. Routines save you energy!

Did you know that making choices (What shall I work on now? Which thing is more important? When am I going to find time to do that?!) is incredibly draining!?

So while it’s lovely to work for yourself and have the freedom to decide what to do and when to do it, that freedom can sap your energy too!

And that’s why routines are good. You kinda decide ONCE when you’re going to do all this stuff and then there’s no decision to be made on a daily basis. You just follow the routine!

You can do this super-simply. For example you could make checking your email a routine that you do just at 10 am and 4 pm. You don’t ever need to think “I should check my email” because you just do it at the appointed time.

It’s totally worth giving this a try as turning little daily decisions into routines can help you save your mental energy for the big things!

3. Routines make you do it!

Y’know most of us just don’t do what we are supposed to do! It’s true! And when we run our own businesses there’s no one to make us do what we’re supposed to do either!

That’s where routines are super-useful! They make us do stuff! They instil in us the discipline to do that thing which we would otherwise not do!

A good example of this is having a daily routine of 30 minutes of marketing! Lots of us would rather make/do our stuff than market it and without a routine we approach marketing as something we’re ‘supposed to do’.In other words we don’t do it! But if we make marketing a daily 30 minute habit, well what d’you know? We DO do it! Simps!

 4.Routines help you show up and do the work Every Day!

We are what we repeatedly do…..so it’s the stuff we do EVERY DAY that makes our business a success. Or not.

The key is to create habits and routines which help us show up and do the RIGHT work (more on that in a minute) every day.

When you work for yourself it’s easy to be too busy to do, say, the important stuff but when we create routines, they helps us work on the right stuff every day!

The right routines

We are creatures of habit, in business and in life, so we need to be careful that we form habits that actually help us!

Here are some tips: 

1.Look at your current daily routine. What habits do you have? Look at things like:

1. What work do you do first?
2. When do you check your emails?
3. When and how do you check in to Social Media?
4. What on your to-do list never seems to get done?
5. What time of day do you do the HARD work-y things?

2.How long do you concentrate for before you need to get a drink/check Facebook/fold the washing?

3.Now look at those routines. Are there any you’d like to change? Is there a better way to do the work? Is there something that doesn’t get done that needs a routine?

4.Think about the time of day when YOU do your best work and have the most energy. Can you change your routine so that you do the important work then? I’m a morning person and I get up super-early so I get an hour of important work done before I do the lunchbox/school run. This wouldn’t work for everyone but it works well for me. Routines are personal!

5.Have a think about what you would really like to achieve this year. Can you make a daily routine to help you get there (Some tips on this in the 100 day Goal)

♡ YOU! ♡

Do you like routines?! Got any tips you’d like to share?

– X-

How to get it all done when you’re a business of ONE!

If you feel like you have too much to do and wondering if you can ever make your solo business successful without working 24/7 , you’ll love our new guide“How to get it all done when you’re a business of ONE” . You totally CAN do it! More deets here if you fancy.

 

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