How to Balance Your Time and Create a Flexible Daily Routine
Is it better to stick to a routine or embrace spontaneity? When you have a flexible routine, you don’t even need to find an answer to this question – cause you can have both! 😉
In this article, you’ll discover how you can find balance by creating a flexible daily routine that still allows you to be (somewhat) productive!
So, are you ready to embrace both balance and flexibility? Then, let’s get started!
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What Is A Balanced Routine?
A flexible routine allows you to accomplish what you need and want to do, ensuring you don’t burn out along the journey.
Most people think that sticking to a routine means giving up on their sense of freedom.
On the contrary, having a clear structure to your days gives you more independence and freedom. Why? Cause you won’t have to think about what’s the next thing to do every five minutes!
But, like everything in life, also routine is good in moderation.
You need to follow a structure, but you don’t have to transform into a cage.
You can set some guidelines, but they shouldn’t become strict rules.
Having structure but also freedom is the key to adopting a flexible routine.
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5 Tips for Creating a Flexible Routine
If you’re wondering how to get started, here are 5 golden hacks to welcoming balance and flexibility into your life:
1. Identify your top priorities
So many things to do, and so little time to get it all done – right?
If this resonates with you, don’t beat yourself up for not managing your time properly. The real problem? You’re not focusing on what truly matters…
When you identify your top priorities, you’ll realize that you don’t need to tackle 100 tasks per day, but you just need to focus on the right ones.
Ideally, in a week, aim at setting 3-5 priorities. Then, you can break them down into daily priorities – also known as MITs (Most Important Tasks).
The tasks you must focus on differ based on your priorities. It makes sense, right?
For example, if your number one priority is growing your blog, you might have weekly or daily tasks such as:
- Writing one or two articles
- Scheduling your social media content
- Interacting with your audience
- Pitching articles for guest blogging
- Creating visuals for Pinterest
It’s natural that a huge chunk of your time will be spent online, working to build your dream lifestyle.
On the other hand, if your top priority for this season of life is to nurture your relationships, your tasks could include:
- Planning regular date nights with your partner
- Catching up with your friends more than once a month
- Calling your mom once a week
- Finding a new community to join (Ex. A book club, fitness group, …)
- Spending quality time with your people
If relationships are your priorities, it’s obvious that you’d choose to visit your family on the weekend rather than spend it working on your side hustle.
There’s no right and wrong in the way you spend your time – it’s just a matter of priorities.
2. Start small
The key to developing a flexible routine while still being consistent with your healthy habits is to start small.
Starting small means breaking down your big, overwhelming goal into smaller steps you can take (almost) daily – so you can make regular progress! 😉
One of my life’s mottos is “Small progress is better than none”.
I’m a huge believer that success isn’t a breakthrough but the consequence of small, aligned actions repeated consistently.
If your big goal is waking up early, starting small means setting your alarm even just 5 minutes earlier than usual, slowly but steadily adapting your body to earlier wake-up times.
Maybe your goal is to launch your blog; in this case, starting small looks like finding an available domain name and coming up with your blog’s categories.
Or, if your big goal is to save enough money to book your dream vacation, starting small could be as simple as canceling unused monthly subscriptions.
PS. Looking for the right strategy to achieve all your goals? Get the ultimate 90-Day Goal Action Plan and start building your dream life – one goal at a time!
3. Base your work on your energy levels
If you’re struggling to be productive, the problem isn’t that you’re managing your time poorly but rather that you’re not tackling your tasks according to your energy levels.
Knowing when you’re high-energy is crucial to building a flexible routine. After all, you can’t maintain a balanced lifestyle if you’re running low on energy…
To identify when your energy is at its peak, you must track how you feel throughout the day for a few days or even a whole week.
For example, if you understand that your most creative hours are between 8 and 11 AM, you’ll schedule your creative work for that timeframe.
If it’s the opposite, and you get more creative late at night, you’ll leave those tasks for the last part of your day.
When do you prefer to work out? Is it in the morning because it gives you energy for the rest of the day? Or does it wear you out and so you prefer exercising late in the afternoon, as a way to decompress after a long day?
Try experimenting with your schedule because only then you’ll understand what works best for you and what really doesn’t.
4. Progress over perfection
If you’re a perfectionist like me, you’d want to get everything done. (Perfectly, of course 😉 )
It took me some time to realize that some things are better just done than perfect.
Aiming at perfection is what’s stopping you from creating a sustainable and balanced routine that embraces flexibility.
If you want to make some real progress, you must accept it’s unrealistic to want to aim at perfection, all the time.
It’s time for you too to let go of your perfectionist tendency and welcome in your life the idea that small progress – actually, any progress – is better than none!
For example, if you set the goal to:
- Work out 7 times per week and end up working out “only” 5 times this week → Amazing! You’ve still made progress toward your health goals
- Meditate for 10 minutes every day and end up doing it “only” for 5 → Nice work! You’ve still worked toward becoming more mindful
- Write 4 weekly blog posts and ended up writing “just” half of them → Yay! You still have 2 great articles ready to be published
It doesn’t matter at what speed you go, as long as you keep moving forward.
5. Embrace self-compassion
Finally, the last piece of advice to create a flexible daily routine is to embrace self-compassion.
Not always everything goes as planned…I mean, life happens – and you must accept it.
Being more compassionate with yourself means understanding that, after all, you’re just a human being trying your best at this journey called life.
Embracing self-compassion means:
- Not judging yourself for your past mistakes
- Silencing your worst inner critic and giving yourself some grace
- Avoiding over-catastrophizing and looking at things objectively
When you embrace self-compassion, you’re allowing yourself to learn from your mistakes, rather than them being a life sentence.
You’re speaking kind words to yourself and promoting change from a place of self-love rather than hate.
You’re accepting things for what they are without wanting them to be any different – without wanting you to be any different.
Conclusion
That’s all for me today!
To quickly recap, here’s what you need to do to create a flexible routine for your daily life:
- Identify your 3-5 top priorities
- Start small
- Create an energy-based schedule
- Focus on progress over perfection
- Embrace self-compassion
The key to doing anything in the long run is to make it sustainable – whether that’s a goal you’re pursuing, a habit you’re forming, or a project you’re working on.
With these 5 tips, you’re on the right track to building a flexible routine that can help you maintain a healthy and balanced lifestyle – yet somewhat productive.
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Until next time,
