Today, you’ll learn more about why setting a routine can be challenging. By understanding the root causes of your behaviors, you’ll learn how to make changes and stick with them. You’ll also discover some positive daily routines that can lead you to a healthier and happier life. Finding and adopting the right daily routine will re-energize you and help you regain wasted time. Your mind and body will thank you for the decreased anxiety and extra care you’ve given them. Here’s to a healthier, calmer, and higher-achieving you.
How a Daily Routine Changes Your Life
Your daily routine consists of all of your habits. These actions structure your day and make the difference between operating at peak efficiency and struggling to make it through a poorly-planned day. You can have energizing, time-saving routines or adopt draining, inefficient routines. The choice is up to you. Don’t feel bad knowing that some unhealthy habits have crept into your day. The important thing is to recognize them so that you can make a change. An excellent daily routine sets you up for success. If you make just one change that saves you 10 minutes daily, you can regain 60 hours of your precious time each year.[1]
Best Daily Routines for a Healthy Life
It takes time to become the best version of yourself, but we’ll help you make it easier by getting you a few healthy daily routine examples to follow directly.
Daily Routine for Good Health and More Energy
1. Start the Day With a Glass of Lemon Water
Simply add the juice of half a lemon to your glass and drink it to enjoy a refreshing start to the day. Lemon juice reduces your body’s acidity levels, which, in turn, protects you against inflammatory diseases, such as fungal infections and osteoporosis. [2]
2. Exercise in the Morning
Working out early in the morning improves your energy levels and circulation, and encourages good lymphatic function. Just 20 or 30 minutes every day can make a difference! Mix cardio and weights throughout the week for overall toning and general health. For great exercises, grab this Cardio Home Workout Plan for free and try the recommended exercises! Getting on the scale each morning is also an effective way to monitor your weight. Don’t go weeks without weighing yourself because this allows you to remain in denial about any weight gain.
3. Eat a Good Breakfast
When you eat breakfast, fuel yourself with a healthy mix of protein, slow-release carbohydrates, vitamins, and minerals. Sensible options include yogurt with nuts and berries, a vegetable omelet, and low-sugar granola bars with a piece of fruit.
4. Stay Hydrated
Did you know that becoming even slightly dehydrated can lead to lowered mood and decreased concentration? Keep water or other low-sugar drinks on hand to sip throughout the day.[3]
5. Get a Healthy Lunch
Even the busiest of us can grab a healthy lunch as part of a daily routine. For lunch ideas, you can make in advance and take with you to work, check out this post: Healthy Lunch Ideas for Work Avoid too much fat at lunchtime, as it promotes afternoon lethargy, which isn’t going to help you get through a busy day! [4]
6. Do Some Mid-Afternoon Stretches
Most of us have a mid-afternoon “slump” somewhere between 2 and 4 PM, but you can keep yourself going through the day by choosing a healthy lunch and doing some light stretches or a bit of exercise in the afternoon. Check out this list of 29 exercises you can do at (or near) your desk.
7. Dinner
With many meal planning apps out there, getting a quick but healthy dinner on the table has never been easier! Be realistic, and choose something that doesn’t require much time or effort to throw together. Otherwise, you may resort to takeout. Green vegetables are always a great choice, as they are packed with antioxidants and have an alkalizing effect. Choose plant-based proteins such as tofu or seitan or, if you prefer animal protein, pick fish and lamb rather than beef or chicken to minimize acidity levels in the body. [5] Avoid caffeine in the late afternoon and evening because it will prevent you from sleeping soundly at night.
8. Take Time to Relax
It’s normal to feel stressed from time to time, but high-stress levels leave you vulnerable to a number of health conditions and problems, including depression and elevated blood pressure. Find a healthy activity that relaxes you, and then set aside sometime every day to do it as part of your daily routine. This could be journaling, reading an inspiring book, spending time with a pet, meditating, or simply taking a few minutes to remind yourself of everything that is going well in your life.
9. Take a Vitamin C Supplement Before Bed
Before turning in for the night, take half a teaspoon of buffered vitamin C powder in a glass of water. This is a quick, effective means of reducing the acidity in your body. It will also ensure that you go to bed well-hydrated, which will help you wake up when that alarm clock beeps.
10. Go to Sleep at a Reasonable Hour
It sounds obvious, but if you want to feel your best, you must get enough sleep. Most experts recommend that we get 6 to 10 hours of sleep per night. [6] Turn off your phone and computer at least an hour before bed, and avoid vigorous exercise in the late evening. These measures will help you wind down when it’s time for sleep.
Daily Routine for an Organized Life
1. Make Your Bed
Prepare for the day by making your bed. It’s a quick chore that will put you in a productive, organized frame of mind. [7]
2. Have Your Equipment and Clothes Laid out the Night Before
If you like to work out, the morning is the best time to do it! It will leave you feeling full of energy and will give you a sense of accomplishment before you leave the house. Whether you like to go for a walk, take a gym class, or do yoga in your bedroom, make sure that you have all the equipment and clothing you need, laid out and ready the night before.
3. Wipe Down Large Surfaces
After your morning shower, spray down and wipe the largest surfaces in your bathroom. It’s much easier and more fun to do mini-cleans throughout the week than to wait until the weekend![8]
4. Put Everything Back Where You Found It
When you’ve made your breakfast, put everything back exactly where you found it, as this makes everything easier the morning after. If you notice that you are running low on a grocery item, add it to a list you can take with you next time you pass the grocery store.
5. Run Through a List of Essential Items
Before you leave the house, run through a list of your essential items, such as your wallet, employee badge, water bottle, and so on. Keep a list of these items near your front door so you can quickly check your purse or bag before heading out the door as part of your daily routine.
6. Prioritize Your Tasks
Make a list of tasks and decide whether they are important, urgent, both, or neither. Start with urgent and important tasks, move on to the important and non-urgent tasks, then tackle the unimportant but urgent jobs. Use this Full Life Planner to help you better organize your day. Writing a task list can always give you a sense of control.
7. Prioritize Your Emails
Before you start your day, spend 10 minutes prioritizing your e-mails. Get into the habit of deciding which ones need your urgent attention, which are important, which are both, and which are neither. Check your e-mails every couple of hours rather than every few minutes because frequent interruptions will impair your concentration and productivity.
8. Keep Your Finances on Track
Take a couple of minutes to keep your finances on track each day as part of your daily routine. Check your bank balance and ensure you’re sticking to your budget.
9. Plan for Dinner
Do you need to pick anything up from the grocery store on the way home? Do you need to look up a recipe? This only takes a few minutes, but a bit of planning can save a lot of time later.
10. Clear Your Desk at the End of the Day
Take five minutes to clear your work desk before leaving for your break. It will help you feel more organized when you return.
11. Review Your To-Do List
If you aren’t making as much progress as you hoped, it’s time to rewrite it!
12. Do the Dishes Immediately After Dinner
Otherwise, you might be tempted to sit in front of the TV and get distracted.
13. Do a “Brain Dump”
Doing a “brain dump” is helpful if you tend to lie awake worrying about what you need to do the next day. Once you have written them down, you can go to sleep knowing that you can refer to the list when you wake up.
Daily Routine for More Productive Work
1. Plan the Night Before
Some of the most influential and productive people start their daily routine the night before. Think of this as the planning stage. At this time, you might find it helpful to plot out your day in blocks of time, with a specific activity planned for each. This is commonly known as the time blocking method, which ensures that you don’t end up multitasking, which can negatively impact your productivity.
2. Wake up at the Same Time Every Day
This may sound counterintuitive; it is often imagined that the most productive people are those that can wake up at dawn and continue into the evening. But the 9-5 workday might not necessarily suit everyone. [9] I’m not suggesting that people work less, but someone who works from 10-6 works for just as long as someone who works 9-5, and that extra hour in bed may mean that they’re more fresh and ready to work. If you have any flexibility at all, consider what works best for you.
3. Eat a Good Breakfast
Once you have woken up, it is essential to eat well as part of your daily routine. It would help if you had something that will give you a good boost of energy while keeping you full. A good idea is oatmeal with a smoothie or a healthy fruit juice. Check out 30 Healthy And Tasty Recipes For Breakfast That You Can Make The Night Before for more healthy breakfast choices that are easy to make and keep you energetic.
4. Create a Distraction-Free Workspace
A few years ago, a study at Princeton University concluded that if there are many forms of visual stimuli in your field of vision, your brain will spread its focus and attention to each piece. [10] In other words, if your desk is cluttered, your ability to focus on the task at hand diminishes. Simply clearing your desk of distractions can greatly impact your focus and productivity.
5. Don’t Check Emails First
Mornings are a great time to do productive work that requires focus, creativity, and strategy. Clearing out the inbox gives you a false sense of achievement and wastes the opportunity to engage your brain in more proactive tasks. Though you may have read a lot of emails, you haven’t done anything significant. Instead, focus on your goals, and do what really matters.
6. Tackle the Worst Thing First
Start your daily routine at work by tackling the most difficult or most pressing task first, the task that will most likely encourage you to procrastinate. This is the philosophy put forward by Brian Tracy in his book Eat That Frog. The benefit of this is simple. Even if you accomplish little else that day, you can be happy knowing that you did something important. Also, by doing the most challenging thing first, everything else will be easier.
7. Rest or Meditate
When setting up a routine, it can be easy to forget the most important activity: resting. Humans aren’t built for working all day, every day without a break. If you don’t consider this in your routine, there is a danger that you will lose energy and enthusiasm altogether and burn out, thereby killing your productivity altogether. This can be mitigated by making sure to get some rest. One way to do this is by picking a reasonable time to stop working. Another is to take a quick nap or try meditation.
8. Say No to Unreasonable Requests
This may be the hardest thing on this list, but it can be one of the most effective. Adding extra tasks and jobs to your day can immediately throw your routine off balance, and it will negatively impact your day’s productivity. As such, declining and saying no to extra tasks (that are unreasonably urgent or unimportant) can be the key to staying productive. After all, doing one thing really well is more important than doing several things badly.
9. Optimize Your Work
The best rest is a change of work. Break up your workday into interchanging periods of 45 and 15 minutes, and switch between tasks. Try to make sure the tasks are completely different from one another. Looks like a waste of time? Try it out and see how your output changes.
10. Minimizing Time Wasted on Routines
There are millions of tips on how to reduce time spent on mundane activities like cooking and home cleaning, but one thing works surprisingly well: Set the amount of time you are willing to spend on them each week and each day and never exceed it. You will be surprised how resourceful you become in the face of a self-imposed deadline.
11. Use Tools That Will Help You Concentrate
In the internet age, distractions are perhaps an even greater enemy of productivity than in any previous historical period. But in order to fight them, you may be able to use the very place they come from. The web is rife with online tools that help you concentrate on the task at hand. Some block distracting sites while you work, others help you track how much time you waste, and others isolate you from social networks.
Daily Routine for a Stronger Relationship
1. Kiss Your Partner Goodbye
How often do you rush out of the door with a quick peck on the cheek and a “see you later!” Maybe you’ve got to the stage where you don’t even do that anymore. It’s important to take the time to say goodbye. Create 3 to 5 minutes in your morning routine to be with your partner and properly say goodbye. Kiss each other meaningfully, and take in the moment. It’s important not to overlook these small gestures.
2. Create Little Daily Rituals
Creating small actions that are meaningful to both of you can build a sense of connection, which can carry on throughout your day when you’re apart. Leave little notes under your partner’s coffee cup. Write a message on the fogged-up mirror for your partner to discover. Text a joke of the day on your lunch breaks. These rituals bring a sense of positive expectation and bonding, something only the two of you share together. Without these, relationships can become stale.
3. Schedule a Date Night
This is a particularly important part of your daily routine when you have kids. When children and extra responsibilities control your lives, your relationship can get overlooked. This is when things can break down, and intimacy gets lost no matter how much you love each other. Schedule regular date nights where you can be free from responsibilities and connect with each other. Use this time to check how you are both feeling and most importantly, have fun. Keep reconnecting with the reasons you fell in love in the first place.
4. Create a Bonding Bedtime Routine
When the doors are closed, and you’ve finally fallen into bed, it’s easy to want to fall asleep, but bedtime is a wonderful time to get connected with your partner both physically and emotionally. Try to go to bed at the same time, and use it as your couple time. Pillow talk is an excellent time to bond. While you’re in a relaxed state, talk about your days at work, any concerns, or even future plans. Communication and talking things out is the best habit you can have as a couple. Just make sure you take the time to really listen to each other with respect and an open mind, always ending the night on a positive note.
How to Stick to Your Routine
When you do something, and no immediate harm comes to you, your subconscious mind assumes it’s safe to continue doing the activity. Overcoming a poor daily routine that feels comfortable to you requires impressive willpower. Reaching for a snack or scrolling through social media can sabotage healthy plans by flooding your brain with dopamine, a feel-good neurotransmitter. That dopamine release causes you to want to continue the action whether or not it’s good for you. There may be quite a few things that need to be changed in your life. Changing too many habits at once can be difficult and discouraging. On top of that, we only have so much mental bandwidth to devote to making decisions. When decision fatigue sets in, we’re likely to revert to whatever is easiest, even if we know it’s unhealthy. Biting off more than you can chew is a surefire way to fail. Instead, pick one routine, and work on that. Or better, pick one habit and stick to that first. Upgrading your daily routine is a commitment. By starting small and being realistic, you can develop healthy rituals and efficient routines that help you get the most out of life. Featured photo credit: Olivia Anne Snyder via unsplash.com
