After almost 15 years of marriage, my hubby and I incorporated a weekly date night. We’ve been on plenty of dates before but never had it scheduled on a consistent basis. And I’ve been loving it.
Finally a time to:
- Sit in peace without the kiddos and order a real adult meal
- Catch up with my hubby in one sitting vs. 79 emails and texts over the course of the week
- Try new restaurants
- Consistently reconnect
And the moral of this romance thriller is…?
You can systemize anything. 🙂 Yup, even 20 year old relationships.
Some people squirm at the thought of routines and systems — especially for things you enjoy doing. There’s a fear that it depletes you of your creativity and spontaneity.
Routines make you rigid, boring and enslaved to your schedule.
In my experience, this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
In fact, the more consistent I am with routines and structure, the more time, space, energy and freedom I have.
Truth Bomb: With time blocked for a specific activity, you’re fully focused on it, which opens a floodgate of ideas and reduces the stress of other thoughts that would typically distract you.
So instead of “taking out the romance” from my relationship with my hubby, consistent dates give us committed time to focus on us and what we want to do.
Because the truth is this. Consistency Rules.
The power of consistency in every aspect of your work and life is mind-blowing, (not to mention life-changing) — from running meetings, to writing proposals, to paying bills, to doing errands, to losing weight, to maintaining relationships.
If you feel chaotic, stressed and in a general state of “what was I doing twenty minutes ago and what should I be going now?” – then chances are you’re not incorporating enough consistent systems in your life.
So let’s start with identifying where you’d benefit from one.
What’s a part of your day that consistently feels stressful?
– Getting out of the house in the morning
– Getting through emails
– Getting anything done at work before noon
– Dinner time
Pick ONE and focus on that. Ask yourself where you can systemize and consistently do even a sliver of this overwhelming time and/or task. Like:
Stressed getting out in the morning? You might:
- lay out your outfit every night for the next day
- wake up a half hour earlier everyday
- run through a checklist of your kids backpack at 7:15am
Stressed getting through emails? You might:
- schedule 3 times during the day to scan your emails for urgent matters
- schedule 3 more times during the day for responding to everything else
- put a timer on for every 50 minutes (so you only check your email the last 10 minutes of each hour)
Stressed getting anything done at work before noon? You might:
- come in one hour early everyday before the chaos starts
- book a conference room for the first one hour of work so you can work uninterrupted
- commit to not opening your email or phone until 10am
Stressed around dinner time? You might:
- create a weekly meal plan and grocery shop every Sunday
- have set nights for certain cuisines (Mon: Chinese, Tues: Pasta, Wed: Burgers etc)
- create a family chart for assigned chopping and cooking tasks
Consistency is key to reaching your goals. And a simple process is your ticket to consistency and success.
If you take a little time to analyze where you are spending a large portion of your time doing the same thing again and again OR frustrated because you’re NOT doing it often enough, you can put some kind of system into place to resolve it.
If you’re thinking, “there are a million places in my life that could use some consistency!” …perhaps we should talk.
If you’re ready for personal accountability, goal setting and squashing overwhelm and procrastination, set up a free, no strings attached assessment call with me here. Like seriously. It. Is. Time.
Bottom line: Systemize your life to improve it.
Remember, we can chat right here. In the meantime, I’ll be researching new restaurants for Sunday night! 😉
Xo,
Mridu
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