In self-employment, you are an all-rounder and face the daily challenge of balancing diverse professional and private goals. This is not always easy, as daily business often consumes all your time.
Long-term goals, important tasks, and basics tend to fall by the wayside:
- Writing blogs or technical articles
- Do sports and stay fit
- Learning new skills
- Making strategic plans
- Creating and implementing innovations
- Building up new business
- Lunch
Habits and daily routines are an excellent tool to keep track of these things and finally tackle them. Just 15 minutes a day is often sufficient to get things moving and achieve results. At the same time, these 15 minutes do not disrupt your daily schedule or cause disruption.
In 4 steps to a routine
To establish functioning routines, the following approach is recommended:
Step 1: Set target
Step 2: Ask yourself what you can do for 15 minutes each day to achieve your goal
Step 3: Define a fixed time at which you devote yourself to this task every day (e.g. immediately after getting up in the morning, as the first task in the office, etc.). In my experience it works best to schedule this routine in the morning. Then you start the day with a good feeling and a small success.
Step 4: Set yourself a reward if you have completed the routine 10, 20 or 30 times without a day off
Then it is time to get started.
The first day is usually the hardest. With each day it becomes easier to implement the routine. After the 21st day, the routine is then firmly integrated into your everyday life and becomes part of your life.
Keeping up with the routine and expanding
If you have a day when you cannot manage the 15 minutes for whatever reason, it is important to resume your routine the following day. Otherwise it will become increasingly difficult to get back into the routine.
If you feel that you need to extend your 15 minutes or start a second routine, do so. It is best to wait with a second routine until the first one is firmly integrated into your daily routine.
Little helper
There are now many apps that can help you maintain routines. My favourite app is the following:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=se.lixi.mychain (Android)
So now it is time to take small steps towards your big (or small) goals.
By the way, this blog article was also created as part of my daily writing routine. And as you can see it worked.
Have fun trying it out!
Literature on the topic habits & routines:
If you want to learn more about routines, I can recommend the following two books on the subject:
- The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change, Charles Duhigg (Amazon Link)
- Atomic Habits, James Clear (Amazon Link)
