Back to the Morning Routine and Refining the Evening Routine

I am heading back to work this week after a week off for Spring Break. Not much happened this past week - things were all about resting - and now it is time to get back into the morning routine that I started in February...that was interrupted many times in February due to inclement weather days...and that seems to serve me well, so I want to reestablish that particular routine.

Here's the deal. I am an early riser and once I am up, I am ready to get going. There is very little sleeping in or snoozing in my home because my eyes pop open and off I go. I am one of those annoying morning people who just do best in the early morning hours. I tend to wake up about 4am most mornings. Lately, I've been waking up at about 2am no matter when I go to sleep. I would like to get back into the routine of waking up at 4am rather than at 2am. My evening routine tends to have little to no effect on my morning routine - if I go to sleep at midnight, I still wake up at 4am (or 2am) - I am just more tired than if I go to sleep at 8pm. I am a proud morning person.

Now, I do my best strategizing and thinking in the early morning hours. After working a full day, my brain just seems to stop what it is doing and doesn't work in a structured manner very well. I do most of my writing, product development, and composing in the early morning because that is when my brain works the best. In the early evening, I tend to read fun books, watch mindless television, and talk to family rather than doing anything that taxes my brain. I do spend some time with my ideas book in the evenings - that sort of task, coming up with ideas, is better suited to my night time brain than my morning brain. Mornings are for doing things.

So, my morning routine tends to go something like this...

1. Wake-up - get out of bed around 4am and start the process of dressing and getting ready for the day.
2. Computer check - run around all of my social media outlets to see what has transpired overnight.
3. Blog - sit down and write something for this blog. Things are rarely planned out beforehand, but I do think about what I am going to write during odd moments of the day.
4. Food preparation - I do not eat breakfast very often. In fact, I don't usually even get hungry until about 10am most days, but I do find that making a lunch helps me with all sorts of things. So, making a lunch is something that I try to do during my routine.
5. Shower and get ready for the day - I have to wear a uniform of sorts, so I often postpone dressing until after many other things have been done.
6. Crafting and creating - without this particular part of my routine, I tend to leave my house very early and then I end up donating time to my facility. I don't like that, so I try to include some crafting/creating time into my morning routines. I have slacked off in this area lately, especially because of inclement weather situations, but it is time to get this part of my routine started again. Today I need to make a file folder demonstration for a product that I am going to put on my Teachers Pay Teachers store. Not extremely creative, but definitely will use my crafting skills.
7. Leaving for my commute - I live an hour away from where I work. That is on purpose. I enjoy commuting and treat that time as my "getting ready to be work MJ" time.
8. Work.

My evening routine is less structured. Some of that is purposeful, but most of the time, I am so tired that I don't feel like doing much of anything other than stretching out on my bed for the evening. I want that to stop, so I am developing an evening routine to go along with my morning routine that works so well for me. To this end, I have changed some things in my bullet journal.

Oh, yes, this all comes down to my bullet journal!!

I do a weekly bullet journal for my home time, and I have experimented with all sorts of set-ups and spreads and stuff that have not worked for me at all. When things don't work, I tend to be the type of person who looks for another solution, so I am trying a different type of format to see if it will help me get to my goals for this week.

In the recent past, I've had a weekly calendar where I listed all the commitments that I had every week. There has been a section for things coming up in the next week and for things happening in the future - important dates and long-term commitments that I need to remember. I recently forgot an appointment because I didn't keep this section up to date. I also have another page where I list tasks and chores, projects that I'm doing, and other things to think about. I have listed specific chores on specific days but I haven't accomplished those chores on the days that I've planned. I've just been too lazy.

This past week, I went to see a movie at our local theater. I enjoyed the movie (Captain Marvel, by the way), and I thought about how decadent it felt to be in a theater doing something that I enjoyed and LIGHT BULB! I realized that I have a reinforcer all ready for me! Chores and movies - they can go together for me. When I finish all my chores, I can take some time and spend a bit of money on going to see a movie or purchasing an inexpensive new movie as a reward. Silly thought, but there is a reason that intermittent reinforcement schedules work to establish routines.

Knowing what I know about myself and about my bullet journal, I decided to change my chore list a bit. Instead of trying to assign specific tasks to specific days (something that has FAILED me in the past), I opted to list the chores out in a new section of my weekly spread. Every evening, I will choose something to do that is on the list and then do that thing. I also have a list of goals that are things that are not chores but things that I'd like to be doing. These things are things like taking lunch to work, reading books for fun, going to bed after 8pm, and tasks that I need to do like prepping my presentations for the MWRAMTA conference in three weeks. We will see if this set-up works for me. If it does, and I start establishing a routine, I'll get to see another movie pretty soon. If it doesn't, then it is time to refine the plan and try again.

I will have some sort of routine in the evenings just like my routine in the mornings. Speaking of, it is time to get my lunch into the lunch box and then move into the next portion of the day. Happy day after Spring Break!

Time to get back into the routine.