Avoid These Common Mistakes When Creating a Daily or Weekly Routine

If you’ve been enjoying my recent content, you might have found yourself inspired to start creating your own daily and/or weekly routine.

Or maybe, you’ve realized your current setup doesn’t quite work for you and what it is you want to achieve.

I know the feeling.

Once I learned this stuff, I was super keen to dive in and build my shiny new schedule (nerd alert).

But I soon found myself frustrated by the fact that what I’d planned on paper wasn’t what was happening in real life.

I’d mapped out all the things that were important to me, but still noticed some things not getting done as I’d hoped they would.

However, with some small adjustments and guidance from a mentor, I realized that there were simply a few mistakes I was making which you don’t take into account when you’re first setting all this stuff up.

I don’t want you to go through the same experience, so I’m laying these out for you below.

Without further delay, here are some of the most common mistakes people (myself included) make when setting up a daily or weekly routine.

The most common mistakes when creating a daily or weekly routine

1. Time buffers. When creating a daily schedule, it can be easy to fill in everything you’d like to do during the day, but there’s one small catch: we simply cannot go straight from one task to another without at least a small break in between. There’s something called context switching which basically means that there’s this mental residue that gets left behind from your previous task. Plus, not allowing for buffers sets you up for failure if things take longer than expected. Which leads me to number 2…

2. Underestimating how long things take. Unless you’ve done something 100 times and know exactly how long it will take, I would throw in some conservative estimates here. For example, my workouts typically take one hour, but I schedule 90 minutes to account for things like getting there and back, seeing someone I know,  showering, etc. 

3. Not being prepared. In my article on creating a weekly schedule, I recommended planning tomorrow today by ending your workday with a daily wrap-up, including doing whatever you need to do in order to jump right into your most important task in the morning. Our willpower fades as we go through the day, so you don’t want to be wasting it early on by doing things that could have been done the night before.

4. Fluffy morning routines. Another error I’ve spoken about before is trying to do too much during your morning routine. As I mentioned previously, your morning routine should include just enough items to get you awake and in a peak state for starting your day, without being so long that it takes over your entire morning. Do the deep work MIT stuff first and then reward yourself with self-care.

5. Spillage. Finally, a super common mistake I’ve made before is allowing things to spill over. This happens for two reasons. 1) We don’t set deadlines for when things should be completed, and so they end up taking longer than they need to. And 2) We don’t have clear boundaries with ourselves or with others as to when things should end, for example allowing meetings to drag on, working late, or going to sleep on time.

The above is not a complete list, I’m sure, but if you were able to take care of these 5 things, I have no doubt that your daily and weekly routines will be a lot more solid.

Throw in some buffer time, plan for things taking slightly longer than expected, prepare the night before, shorten your morning routine and set some boundaries!

Then, have fun crushing it next week (or tomorrow).