Creating routines and schedules

I’m still on following Regina Leeds’ book – last week, the task was to think about goals: what do I want to spend my time doing. This week, the topic is creating routines, and schedules.

I’m really bad when it comes to setting routines. (Partly why I am doing this, obviously). A lot of the time, I start out with good intentions, but get distracted by something along the way.

I’m a really good panic/ “Oh my God, I’m having people over”- cleaner. However, setting a routine would ideally take that need away, and let me have people over, without going into that each time.

Part of the solution for organizing lives includes calendars, and getting into the habit of using them.

I have calendars. I have a small moleskine that I use. I tried using a bigger one, but I like this tiny pocket version with the weeks, room for writing tasks or notes to myself on the side, and I like the fact that it goes for a year and a half, not just a year. I also prefer having a paper back-up, so to speak of my appointments. You never know when technology might fail.

For reminders – I also have a GoogleCalendar that I sync with the iCal on my Mac and iPhone. I like this, because it gives me reminders through text messages, or simply on the phone. My work calendar in Outlook isn’t being synced, so that’s one of the things I have to do manually.

When I was doing my thesis, I would make lists to myself…

– read x articles today,

– write 500 words  today.

– do dishes

– do laundry

You get the gist.

I try to get back into doing lists like that, but honestly, they’re a short-time measure. One thing I’ve tried to implement, is to set up a repeating task on my GoogleCalendar – every Tuesday afternoon after work, I have a laundry task. The idea is that I will then get accustomed to doing laundry then, and don’t have to spend weekend time on it.