Summer Refire: Worried that schedules and structure make your weeks boring?

productivity

Jun 19

In the last summer refire, I walked you through how you can create a schedule that works for you, your life, and your business. For some, creating a schedule might actually feel pretty fun and exciting, BUT following through on it might be hard, or it might feel boring to have your weeks planned out.

In this episode, I’ll walk you through 8 ways that planning and routines and schedules and structure can make your life more flexible and enjoyable. I'll also talk about *why* many of us can feel like schedules and structure just don’t work for us.

I thought that this topic falls well under the SISU part of the productivity ecosystem, meaning that motivation is a key ingredient in being productive especially when we don’t feel like sticking to plans.

And if you have no idea what I’m talking about when I mention the productivity ecosystem, you can go back a few episodes (to episode 31) to get the basics, or read the blog post here.

Having structure and routines in place is suuuper helpful in training your brain to learn when to be productive, and when it’s ok to just relax and breathe. If we don’t have clarity on how we want to divide up our time, there’s a risk that we kinda try to work, or think about work stuff all the time, but maybe don’t always spend that time productively – and then we feel like we just have to keep putting off winding down for the day.

So, let’s dive into the summer refire.

Podcast episode mentioned in this episode: https://jennahellberg.com/podcast/005-three-reasons-why-sticking-to-plans-is-hard

Giveaway

You can win a one-hour pick-my-brain session with me. You can ask me aaaanything when it comes to your productivity, schedule, work-life balance – anything within the realm of things I usually talk about here on the podcast – and get personalized advice.

There are two ways you can enter the giveaway:

1. Share about the podcast with a friend or on your social media, and either send a screenshot of the share to my email jenna@jennahellberg.com or DMs, or share about in IG story and tag me @thejennahellberg so that I can see. (If your account is private I may not see the story; in this case, send a screenshot of it to my DMs)

2. Write a review about Building Balance on Apple podcasts, and send me a screenshot of the review. If you don't have access to Apple podcasts, you could leave me/the podcast a note here: https://jennahellberg.com/note

If you do both, you get two draft spots in the giveaway.

Out of everyone who shares and/or reviews within the month of June 2022, I’ll pick a winner on July 1st and get in touch with them (hopefully you!) by July 5th to schedule the pick-my-brain session.

Shownotes

So in the last summer refire, I walked you through how you can create a schedule that works for you, your life, and your business. But I know that for many people who tend to put things off, who are kind of rebels, or who procrastinate, creating a schedule can feel like a bore. Or rather, creating it might actually be fun, BUT following through on it might be hard.

But generally, it is very hard to reach goals or get the things we want in life and business, if we don’t engage in some kind of planning. In this episode, I’ll walk you through 8 ways that planning and routines and schedules and structure makes things easier.

After the meat of this episode, I’m going to pop back in and give a bit more insight into *why* many of us can feel like schedules and structure just don’t work.

So, let’s dive into the summer refire:

This episode is for you if you’re worried that routines and planning make life too boring or predictable, and you’re looking to get a new perspective and get motivated to stick to routines.

Insert: Hey – this is Jenna from the future. I recorded and put this episode together yesterday, and then I realized today, that there’s something I really should’ve said to preface this whole thing:

If having no regular schedule or routines does work for you, that’s great! This episode is meant more as a pep talk to people who feel like they do function better when there is a structure in place – who are just dealing with that inner struggle between wanting structure and worrying about it getting boring and rigid. So if you are thriving without structure, I’m not saying that you have to create a schedule or routines for yourself – I truly believe that whatever works for you is what works for you, and you don’t need anyone to tell you to change something that’s already working. I actually also go through periods of time when I need things to just be open to anything, and I would love to think that I’m the type of person who can just flourish without any constraints – but it’s not how I function best most of the time. Alright, now back to the original recording.

I feel like I need to tell you that when I was editing my first batch of episodes I realized that my voice was pretty hoarse from allergies even though I had taken allergy meds, so I hope that you bear with me while we’re still going through the allergy season over here in northern California.

But - let’s get to today’s topic.

So over the past couple years I’ve talked to some creative business owners who really feel resistance towards routines and plans. The common worry seem to be that it’ll take away our ability to be spontaneous, to not have flexibility, that that it’ll be too boring for free spirits

But what I have noticed is that a lot of people don’t really thrive when there are zero limits...

When I started my business, I kind of just assumed that me having my own business would mean I have a flexible schedule and lots of freedom. But that wasn’t the case. Sure, on paper I was free to do what I wanted – but in reality…

I was feeling anxious, busy, and overwhelmed all the time
I also kind of felt unsure of what to do and when
I felt guilty when I took time away from my business but I also felt guilty when working all the time, working late at night
I know I was also engaging in a bunch of busywork
I was thinking about work *all the time* → life wasn’t feeling that free or flexible
I was kind of longing back to the time when I had my job as a psychologist, where I knew exactly when I needed to be where and then the rest of my time I was free to do what I wanted – but I also know that I don’t have any desire for now to go back to a regular job. If I really needed to I could do it, but for now I am lucky enough to not have to.

But thinking in that way, missing my regular work schedule, made me realize that I could apply parameters like that to my business owner life – without adding in the elements that I didn’t like about the work as a psychologist.

→ I could have a rhythm in my day, a sort of schedule – it just didn’t need to be the 8-4 as I was used to working. It’s funny how the brain makes that connection between “routines” or “schedule” to the traditional 9-5, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

→ Even if I have a schedule, it doesn’t mean that the content of my work day has gotten any less exciting to me, it doesn’t mean that I’m back in a job where I don’t find that much enjoyment or purpose.

The freedom also comes in other ways, like

→ I can work from anywhere – I don’t need to go to an office

→ I can work with the people I want to work with – this was not something I had control over as a psychologist working in the public sector

So we shouldn’t really equate freedom and flexibility with throwing schedules out the window!

I wanna dive in a little bit more into how having routines and planning your time actually helps you enjoy more freedom and flexibility:

1. Humans actually thrive when they have structure in their day

If there’s anything 2020 has taught us, it is that humans like predictability and structure – and we feel quite stressed and overwhelmed when things are unpredictable.

2020 just showed us this in a very big way – but if you tend to feel overwhelmed or kind of just numb or frazzled throughout your days even though you’d be free to do what you want, it’s a sign that your nervous system is craving some structure and clarity. Humans are creatures of habit – so the best thing to do is to just make sure that our habits and routines align with how we want to live our lives.

It’s not about deciding and locking in what you’ll do each minute of your day and always be predictable. It’s not about perfection.

It’s just about having sort of rhythms in your day, which takes into account your energy and your needs, so that you feel comfortable going through your days so that you can actually get things done and still enjoy yourself.

2. Routines help you make less decisions, you don’t have to start every morning from scratch.

It is so helpful to our nervous system to just sink into a routine and get things done at a time when it’s used to doing it, instead of you having to make decisions all the time.

There’s this notion that people are stuck in a rut if they just do the same things day after day, but I would argue that this is not at all the case. Doing the things day after day is what brings progress, that actually builds up what we want to build up in our lives. Repetition and predictability makes it easier on our nervous system to get things done. It also brings a sense of comfort and safety.

So the important thing is really to just take time every once in a while to make sure that the routines and activities are aligned with how you want to live your life, aligned with what you want to accomplish.

Which brings me to my next point –

3. If you have any goals that you’re working towards, making the steps towards that goal part of your routine kind of just sets your goals on auto-pilot – which is pretty cool!

Let’s say you want to be healthier, so it makes sense to have a routine time in your day for some kind of movement
Or if you want to create a body of work of some kind, it’s important to have time in your day or week set aside for creating that work

4. In that same way, you can incorporate what matters into your life

If you’re looking to have stronger relationships to your friends, it might make sense to have a time of the day or the week when you check in with friends
So basically routines can help you incorporate your values into your life on auto-pilot

5. It allows you to be more spontaneous

When you’ve accounted for the important stuff in your routines and structures, you can do whatever the heck you feel like, because your brain isn’t worried about when you’re gonna get the important stuff done
And if you didn’t get anything else done, you don’t feel as bad about it

6. It’s also quite nice to just know when you’re done for the day.

When you don’t have routines or usual practices in your day, there’s also a risk of just working until you go to sleep
Or always feeling like you should work if you have nothing better to do
And it’s really hard to make time for self care if that’s not planned into your day or week

7. If something unexpected pops up in your day or your week, it’s a lot easier to adjust already existing routines and plans

Versus trying to remember all the things you gotta do + fit them somewhere because then your brain has to think of *eeeverything*

All of the points that I’ve made so far all really come down to one thing:

8. Free up your brain to have time and capacity to think and to be creative

Because your brain doesn’t have to keep trying to solve the “when should we do the things” problem.

Now, if you still worry about a scheduled life becoming boring, I’ve got you.

One way to make sure that sticking to a schedule doesn’t get boring, is that when you plan your routines and schedules, you can plan in time that is unplanned. This really helps with that feeling of flexibility and freedom, too.

For example, you could say that between breakfast and lunch you do your most important tasks, and that after lunch you’re free to work on whatever feels good or exciting. (Not to say that the important can’t be the stuff that’s also exciting.) And then you could have a stop time of 4pm, 5pm, 2pm – whatever suits your life, and then you’re free for the rest of the day.

Or maybe you do your best work between 7-11pm – so maybe you set aside that time for work while you take a bunch of time off during the day

Or maybe you decide a day out of the week when you make zero plans upfront, and let yourself do what you feel like that day

So that was a good chunk of reasons why having routines and structure in your day actually brings you freedom, I hope that this helps you feel more motivated to try to create a schedule for yourself that you enjoy.

Alright, we are at the spot that I promised you in the intro:

Why (oh why!) many of us can feel like schedules and structure just don’t work for us

I’m not going to tell you it’s some mindset stuff or anything like that. It’s actually so much simpler than that: our brains are built to not do things in a new way because whatever it is we’re used to doing is how we’ve survived so far. Our brain’s job is to keep us a live, is to make decisions around whatever is present for us *right now*, which means that it’s not concerned about our longterm goals *and* it doesn’t want us to start new habits or routines that might be inconsequential to our survival.

I talked more about just how long it takes for new habits to become solidified in the brain in a very early episode on the podcast, so you could scroll back all the way to May 2021 to find episode 005 with 3 reasons why sticking to plans is hard. (This is episode 5 of the first season of the podcast, when it was still called Make Your Day). The point is, we need to keep practicing and repeating new things in order for them to be recorded in our brains and for the brain to see that “Hey ok, we can do this, it didn’t kill us, maybe we even got some benefits”.

So it is perfectly natural that schedules don’t “work for you” right away. Thought I do wanna say, that of course there can be instances when a schedule truly doesn’t work for you, but it probably doesn’t mean that schedules in general don’t work for you or that you’re not the type of person who can stick to a schedule – it’s much more likely that the actual schedule just wasn’t right for you and just needs tweaking. And honestly, I don’t think it’s possible to create a schedule now that would work exactly as is 5 years from now, a year from now, maybe even two months from now.

They need to be seen as living breathing entities, just like you – because they’re supposed to be a complement to you.

Jenna Hellberg