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Dear reader, 

On the Internet, we can find lots of posts and videos showing us these wonderful morning routines… but can we all really manage to have a “routine”? Maybe not, but we can still have a “routine-like” moment in our day. First, let me give you an insight into my life: I am a student whose schedule changes every day (I can start at 8 a.m on Monday and at 5 p.m on Tuesday) and from one week to another (8 a.m one Monday, 3 p.m on the following one). On top of that, I have a job on the week-ends so my week-ends really do not look life my weeks, and I live with my boyfriend whose schedule is far crazier than mine: let me tell you it all needs its share of organization! However, I can show you how it all can work, how I can thrive at school, be competent at work, still have a social life while prioritizing my relationship. Ready?

Having a “routine-list” and cutting your days into parts

Because you can’t have a routine does not mean you can not have something that looks like one. Even though you need to be at school at different times each day, you can have a  list to structure your days and have them echo each other. For instance, you can decide that each day between 5 a.m and 1 p.m, you need to have:

1. meditated
2. read a few pages of a book
3. done some kind of exercise

This is merely an example, but what I want to show you is that it is manageable. You need to make sure there are not more than five “essentials” in that list and that you can combine them pretty easily. The point is that rather than having a very strict routine with given times &c., you cut your days into “Morning part”, “Afternoon part”, and “Night part” (or in another way depending on your schedule) and you can also have recurring activities within the same stretches of time each day. It looks like a routine even though it is not as strict and is really manageable with your schedule.

Wake-up (more or less) at the same time each day

Breathe Ladies, I am not asking you to do the “I wake-up like this at 5 a.m” thing BUT to have some consistency in your day to day life. Of course, you are not going to wake-up at 5 a.m everyday if it is required for you only on Mondays, but if you do it on Mondays, you need to wake-up before 7:30 a.m every other day. Most specialists recommend waking-up only one hour after your “normal” wake-up hour when you are especially tired but I am here to give you manageable tips and not top make you feel worse than before by putting unrealistic expectations on you. Wake-up between X and Y making sure than X and Y have no more than two and half hours between them and that will already do wonders for you.

NB: Obvisouly, if you are on night shift some days, do not take this advice into consideration.

Knowing your priority(-ies)

In the beginning, “priority” was a singular word only as it meant “the most important thing of all” but our modern world turned it into a least manageable plural, meaning more or less that we could care for even more things in the same amount of time. That consideration put appart, I think you should have two types of priority(-ies): you life ones and your daily ones.

Life priority(-ies)

If you want an organized life, even though it is tough, I believe you should know your top priority(-ies). Most of the time, you can manage to have it all but there are some points in life where you just need to choose and go for the most important in order not be too overwhelmed. That is why, if you have a really crazy life, you should choose one to two of its components and know that, in times of hardships, they will be your priorities in order to keep some sort of structure in your life.

Daily priorities 

You probably have heard it over and over but I will still finish by covering the topic briefly. In your days, you need to have your “routine-like” structure, but also daily goals/priorities. That means you need to say “no” to everything that does not fit into this list in order to remain organized and on top of everything. I would advise you to have one big priority or up to three smaller ones, no more. The goal is to remain a happy-achiever in life, not to jump from one task to another, exhausting yourself.

Hoping this post helped you realize you could be organized too, 

Lots of love, 

TABOULOT Camille