How a Simple Daily Routine Built A Writing Habit.
Learn how a simple daily routine can help you build a writing habit. Discover practical tips and strategies for developing a consistent writing practice and achieving your goals.
This summer literally destroyed my productivity. At the beginning of 2020, I was really trying to give my best every day, the mindset was about “I don’t want to waste my day.”, and to be honest it was working pretty well.
I was getting tasks done faster at work, my gym training was really proficient and all my side hustles were doing great, especially the writing activity. I was in control, and the results were definitely improving my life quality.
Then Covid-19 came, for me as for everyone else, like a thunderclap. This shouldn’t be an excuse, but some new conditions created by the virus crisis affected the productive routine I built in those months.
How does an unproductive day look like?
There’s not a single factor that converts your winning daily routine to a failing system. What ruined me has been becoming lazier and procrastinating more, starting from small things to those that actually made me feel doing better every day.
It seems ridiculous maybe, but I started losing control when at lunchtime I still didn’t wash the breakfast dishes and rearranged the bedclothes. Those are things that literally takes 2 minutes, but delaying those small tasks is just contributing to mess up a good habit.
Like these, many other factors contributed, such as spending too much time playing on the smartphone useless games, watching ridiculous videos instead of useful tutorials, etc… This then brings you to delay more important things.
First of all, I drastically reduce the amount of time spent reading each day. And this is probably not the worst. I stopped writing.
I began thinking “I can do it later, or maybe tomorrow.”, but tomorrow started as well to become “the next week”.
Before the end of July, I already had lost that confidence in writing and reading. And I also realized it, making me feel worse.
Room for improvements
Luckily there’s always room for improvements. It’s just a matter of finding again your balance, properly organize your time and try to optimize as much as possible the everyday shift.
I deeply thought about a new schedule to get results, not being overwhelmed by the duties and with some free time to enjoy.
In order to get this done, the first step has been deciding what I wanted to achieve. I came up with a (short) list:
- Get back to online writing.
- Make connections and help others in what I’ve already been through.
- Taking some time to read more.
- Restart workouts, it not only restore your physical health, it clear your mind.
- Learn something new every day.
- Dedicate some time to free coding practice.
The routine to achieve more
Considering also that I have a (awesome) day job at Xceed that demands and deserves my full attention, and keeping in mind how important is to sleep, this reduced since the beginning the available time slots.
To also dedicate time to rest and live my life normally, this schedule doesn’t apply on the weekend. I want to point out that this is not a strict schedule I follow every day, but mostly a list of reminders
So let’s see now how this typical day looks like!
- 7.00 am: Wake up, morning routines and a light breakfast to start the day.
- 7.30 am: It’s time to start with the right step:
- Do 25 push-ups plus 25 squats, just enough to wake up my body 😉
- Answer to all Linkedin messages and e-mails. I think doing it in the early morning and then forget about it helps to reduce the stress of replying back immediately. If not something urgent, this is the single time of the day I reply.
- Make connections with people who share my interests and help them sharing good resources.
- 7.45 am: I read a couple of articles and discuss with the authors about them.
- 8.00 am: I dedicate one hour on writing whatever my mind suggests that morning. It could be either a tech topic or recommendations on growth and life-style, as this piece does. Once, I was really inspired and even recommended some books I really liked!
Three days each week I switch to coding my own portfolio and to write code that could help other developers 🤓 - 9.00 am: It’s reading time! I try to read at least 10/15 pages every morning of my books, it helps to feed my mind and get a break before starting to work.
After dedicating most of the day to my work duties, there are left only a couple of tasks to add to my daily routine:
- 6.00 pm: After work, I always watch a couple of videos about tricks and practices I never used, maybe about new coding languages or libraries.
- 6.30 pm: I finally restart to workout and go to the gym three days per week, alternating them with after-work drinking a beer with some friends. As I said, I also need my free time to enjoy🍻
At the end of the day, it’s just time to relax for me, spend time with my girlfriend, cooking and just recharging for the day after.
Wrapping up
I must say I’m really appreciating this routine and the results are clear, it contributes to making me feel more productive and, consequentially, I’m more satisfied with whatever I do. I feel like I’m finally achieving results again, I got back control over my life!
I hope my routine could help you to achieve results and get control of your time. If you’d like to talk more about this, let me know your thoughts, I’ll be happy do talk with you :)
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