Setting up daily Routines

Routines

It is really difficult for me to control myself when you stay at home all day long. There are TV, DVDs, always foods in the fridge, and chips in the cabinet…. If I lose to these temptations, I will keep falling and never get what I want. But I believe that there are several ways to avoid being stuck in this downward spiral. “Routine” is one of my answers. So, I want to talk about what I am trying to do.

1: Schedule

I am a “time freak”. I don’t know if it comes from my home country, Japan, but I am one of the strictest persons about time I have ever met. (I never met someone who was complaining about time more often than me.) Even when I meet a very close friend, I still seriously try to arrive at a meeting spot at least 10 minutes before. All of my employers said to me I never got late for work. It is easy to say, but tougher to actually do it especially in Chicago area where we live. (Blizzard, bad drivers, a lot of road constructions, and my “grandpa” car which could die in any situation.)

So, “making a schedule” is like something I would do as my hobby. Please see an example.

I want to do music for my life. So my schedule is focused on music life. If I fail to stick to the list, especially about music-related matter, I feel disappointed. It is like I betrayed the trust of my family. So during each activity, I do my best to concentrate, not touch any temptations or just sit on a sofa.
In the morning, I do more physical music practice because I am definitely a “morning type” person. And I learn about creative skills in the afternoon until 3pm. After music routines, I am trying to learn something new to level up my ability. 

2: Check List

This is my “routine check list”. Each item came from my handwriting notes in red on the schedule or ideas I came up while I was working on the list. I maybe will put more or delete some of them later, depending on how I am doing. But when I finish each activity on that day, I check it to make sure of missing nothing. Every time I make a check, it gives me a little happiness. I found out that I can do everything much faster once I memorized the whole list and learn an effective way. For example, I can do arm workout while I am working on legs to save time.

3: How do I feel about these routines?

When I started this list, it took a longer time for everything and I got tired sooner. But I could feel clear improvements in only 10 days.  I can wake up in the morning more easily. I can jog more and faster in the morning and stay awake all day. I started wanting to do this list more naturally. I can feel the rhythm every morning…  This feels great!

I know that to decide routine means that it cuts the possibilities of other stuff out of the list. But, it only takes about 30 to 40 minutes to kill the “Stretch and workout” list and almost half an hour for the “Guitar routines”. I still can get a lot of time to do other activities. If I really want to do more stuff daily, I can put them in the list, too. If I don’t feel like it, then it’s not my high priority.

4: My experience

I read a book called “Outlier”. And there was one sentence, “No one who can wake up before dawn 360 days a year fails to make his family rich.” This reminds me of the founder of Panasonic, Mr. Konosuke Matsushita. He was said to be a “person who never sleeps” in his business life.  He wrote in his book that he did not sleep (instead of “could not sleep”) because he enjoyed his life so much. He felt sleeping was like a waste of fun. French military leader, Napoleon Bonaparte, a great inventor, Thomas Edison, and a successful businessman, Andrew Carnegie, were all “short sleep” people. This attracts me a lot to waking up early in the morning to do what I want to do before people wake up.

I started setting up an alarm clock at 5am when I started my routines list. But I got used to it, and now wake up before 4:30am. It’s a little hard to move out of bed immediately, but I think the key is “smell” and “stand up (not sit down)”. Whatever smell you love really helps you let your brain start to work quicker, and if you keep standing up then you have no choice but wake up.

When I wake up, the first I do is stretch my legs and arms in front of the balcony window because I can do stretch even though my brain is not working. I don’t think of anything, just feel the pain on my stiff body. And this pain also helps me to become more awake.

What about the balcony window? We have a small balcony garden in our apartment, and the scent from herbs and flowers is one of my favorites. This stimulus to my nose really works to get me awake.  If I need a drink, I would rather take orange juice than milk or water, because juice has a stronger smell and it gets my brain moving.

The first week of waking up early was VERY dull. At 10am, 2pm, and 6pm…. I just got so sleepy and could not focus on anything. And 9pm was the worst. I felt like a zombie, and could not even remember what I did before going to bed. I did not think like this before, but now I feel it is okay to take a short nap like half an hour. After a nap, you feel sharp and get concentration back. I found it better than to stay awake not being able to focus on anything.

A week after I started, my body started to get used to it. Also thanks to the “working out while my brain is still sleeping”, my body got a little by little more physical power to stay active for longer time, not being like the living dead.