What's one thing that grounds me in both difficult and easy days?

We all have shitty days, and good days. Shitty months, and good months. If I look back there is one habit that really helped me through out the last years, it's having a daily routine.

The daily routine

A daily routine, is a set of tasks, or things that I try to do everyday. At first I always tried to do all this in the morning, and then over the years, I changed it to be my daily routine. Meaning that it's a set of things I try to do everyday, whenever I can within the day.

In this routine I have tiny habits or tasks that fit those categories:

• Things I hate to do but are easier when done daily

• Things that help me be mentally and physically well

• Things that help me have a sense of progress

How to make a daily routine work?

Almost everyday

You see in this article I use a lot the word "try". I really try to do my daily routine everyday, but I'm not a monk, so I'm not doing it everyday perfectly. Instead I try to do it almost everyday. What's nice with this idea of doing things everyday, is that if you miss a day it's not such a big problem. If you do things every week, miss a week it has a much bigger impact.

Define what's the minimum

Writing or going on a run can be pretty hard. There are days where there is just no time. And days where there is just no energy. So having tiny rules like:

• I write at least the title of something, and that counts as writing

• I go at least up to that bridge, or run for at least 5 minutes, or I put my shoes and go out of the flat are good examples of minimum for a "l go run everyday" task in a daily routine

Change it, adapt it, reduce it

Roughly there are the same categories in my daily routine, but the exact content has changed a lot, and still changes based on the life phase I'm in. A daily routine is like a flat. You sometimes have to do a spring cleaning because you hoarded to many things for it. You sometimes want to changes things just to make it more fun, or beautiful. Or you might want to change what's the minimum based on how challenging life is at the moment.

What doesn't change? That you have a daily routine.

Why does it work for me?

I've noticed over the years that I have a hard time doing things once a month, or once a week. But doing them everyday takes me much less energy.

The other thing is that a daily routine helps me a lot with the fact that I'm a dad. It gives me this reassurance that:

• I did what was needed

• I've made progress on what was important to me

And then the rest of the day can be at the service of others, my kid, my family, my work.

What goes in my daily routine?

A daily routine is something that is pretty private, but here the big blocks of what goes in my daily routine:

Things I hate to do but are easier when done daily

Do what you hate everyday. Suddenly you hate it way less.

I'm someone who isn't great at admin stuff, and who really hates it. But over the years, I've noticed that if I do a little bit of admin every day, it's so short that I don't get into the mode of : "Oh I fucking hate this! Please kill me!". I only get to the point of "I don't like it, but at least it's done now and it was fast to do".

Things that help me be mentally and physically well

Going for a run, doing some meditation, or going back in my journal to see what are the nice things that happened yesterday, a week, a month a year ago, all help me to get in the right mood for the day.

Doing a little bit of expectation management for the day: being clear about what I'll be able to do today, and what not, also really helps.

Things that help me have a sense of progress

Each day I try to write a little bit. It can be a blog post like this one. It can be the title of a Service Design Principle, it can be an answer to a common Service Design Question. It doesn't have to be long. It doesn't have to be great. But I try to write everyday.

Writing gives me a sense of "I'm making progress!". It's something tangible I see that tells me that I continue to sharpen the blade of my brain. So that when I need the blade, it's ready to use. A lot of what I write about is what I end up using in my courses or sharing in mentoring sessions.