Readings

Routine is a fundamental part of our lives from day one. As infants, routines promote positive habits and provide structure and—come those toddler years—discipline. When you were a kid, you probably remember your daily routine of brushing your teeth and getting ready for school. And in the afternoons, homework always came before play time, right?

In our adult lives, creating and sticking to routines is not at the top of everyone’s list. In fact, we’re a lot more concerned with “plans” than we are with routines. 

We all know that keeping life “on track” as an adult is a lot more complicated than it was as a kid, too—there are so many moving parts! We have a long list of commitments, deadlines and responsibilities across our work and personal lives. In order to do it all and still have some free time on the side, plans and routines are both essential. 

“Plan” is the buzzword, but plans plus routines are the more powerful combination.

Keeping track of every detail of every day is impossible. Even if you manage to remember everything on your “to-do” list, the reality of life’s unpredictability will step in to present you with unforeseen challenges and opportunities. Keeping your life “on track” does not mean successfully controlling everything. In fact, it’s really about building plans and routines that keep you accountable to your commitments and push you to unlock your full potential even when the unexpected does come up.

Keeping life “on track” is a handy little metaphor, too, because it sets you in proverbial motion. You’re a locomotor flying down the tracks to happiness, freedom and productivity. That elixir of routines plus planning provides a set of everyday instructions that ultimately allow you to make the best of the most valuable resource of all: time.

How to create structure and discipline handling “everyday stuff”

A life with no discipline can pose a pretty insurmountable burden when working to achieve your goals. Let’s be honest—life is rarely easy. On a daily basis you have work commitments, you try to schedule time for your friends or family, you think about your body and what kind of shape it’s in…the list goes on. If you don’t have any systems in your life to streamline things, you won’t consistently stick to any of it. The lack of routine is the very corrosion of discipline.

And while discipline is defined by routine, that’s just the aspect that aligns us to get where we planned to go. The real meaning of discipline is “to meet commitments.” Routine is simply what helps us along without forcing it so much!

So…how do you create routine, for discipline’s sake? 

The Project Management Triangle can help us shed some light.

The Project Management Triangle has been around for decades, and in recent years has been especially popular to help startups decide how to go about development of apps or SaaS ideas. The basic premise is that project development can be any two of these three qualities (fast, good and cheap), but never all three.

Setting routines is about rolling out new habits, and requires some sincere effort on your part to get them started. The payoff later is a routine that enables you to stick to goals and deadlines without thinking so much about the daily steps along the way.

When trying to take on a new routine, if you set expectations that are too ambitious or unrealistic from the onset, that’s where routines fail to stick. This is a natural phenomenon that happens when you bite off more than you can chew, then don’t get it done, and then lose confidence as a consequence. With less confidence, you get even less done after that. The decline can destroy just about anyone.

Doesn’t it make sense, then, to set smaller goals at the onset and gradually increase them?

Coming back to the Project Management Triangle, you can look at the routines you want like new “programs” you’re “developing” into your daily life. You can focus on doing something well until the habit sticks, but maybe that means you won’t be doing it very fast. Or you can focus on doing it “cheaply” (in this metaphor, this means using a low volume of mental or physical energy), but that might mean you won’t do it well.

THIS IS OK.

If you focus on one micro-goal of the routine you want to make a “sticky habit,” you’ll set yourself up for a much more realistic goal that, in the end, will pay out with a routine you can really use.

How staying “on track” means becoming more productive

We can’t say this enough: being productive does NOT mean being busy all the time!

Imagine having to complete a project, any project. If you jump right in with zero planning, chances are that chaos will ensue. Once you’re four steps in, you’ll realize you don’t have the framework or approach to manage all the pieces, and the juggling will get rough. If you took a stab at where to start, you probably won’t know what comes next. In the end, it will take you more time to complete your project—IF you even complete it.

Now, let’s imagine a different scenario. Say you have to complete a project, but this time you break it into smaller segments and have a timeline for completing each one. You can easily see the advantage here. Staying on track is as much about watching where you’re going as it is about keeping momentum.

Planning helps us become more productive in life in general. We act with clear goals and steps in mind, and our responsibilities and commitments end up being checkboxes on a personalized course charted to our success.

Here at Sparkbox, we’re big fans of plans and routines. We’re even bigger fans of how these things play into larger projects and ideas.

If you’re capable of dreaming up an idea, we say you’re capable of committing to it. You can see it through to the end. Even if the idea started as a spark, that tiny snap! of heat that you’ve already fanned into a concept, and that’s enough to get a fire going. Keeping that idea on track (along with all other aspects of life that occupy your headspace) is a matter of a little routine with a touch of planning—and then you’re off to bigger things.

We’d love to hear how Sparkbox has become part of your daily routines. Are you a note taker? A content maker? If you haven’t already, see how storing all your content for all your ideas and projects can be easier and more rewarding on Sparkbox. Make it a routine, starting today.

Losing your way in the literal sense usually happens on road trips, on vacation, and when we’re just-plain distracted. It happens to us all. 

What about losing your way in the figurative sense? We talk as a society about losing our moral direction, or losing our sense of the internal compass that tells us what we want or even who we are. How about losing your way in life? At some point, that happens to all of us, too.

Why do we get “lost?”

There are so many distractions around us that it’s easy to get lost. You could say it’s easier to get lost today than ever before. We have errands, tasks, projects, meetings, responsibilities—these have been constants forever. But now, we also have the onslaught of notifications pulling us out of the task at hand and back into other pending to-dos and preoccupation.

There will always be distractions. We’ve been lost before, and be lost again. Though, while it’s good to be pragmatic about this, one of the biggest culprits misdirecting us today is avoidable. Wouldn’t we want to do everything in our power to avoid it? 

Recognizing and articulating your goals is not always an easy thing. And once you do, you have to map that goal into manageable pieces, stick to that plan, and oversee its execution. In other words, you need to be the engine and the conductor while you navigate down that path.

There are always exits to take as you move down the highway, and sometimes those detours are necessary. When nature calls…well, you take the exit. Sometimes, you can get a sense of satisfaction on projects in this very same way—you’re working toward a goal, but you get distracted by some small, unrelated task that you think of out of the blue. It’s satisfying to get that task done, but the satisfaction doesn’t last. You get back to the project at hand, and later you feel like you have little to show for all the work you’ve done.

Letting distractions get the better of us is natural, and sometimes even rewarding. But making this a habit will not get you where you want to go. We call this “majoring in minor things.” By allowing minor things to get in the way of your potential or steer you off the map, you lose track of the goals you worked so hard to identify in the first place.

Like we said, this is avoidable. Here’s how to do it.

The “minor things” you shouldn’t major in

Let’s start with some questions. Are you taking care of your responsibilities? Do you give your best for every task? Do you feel even a little proud of your ability to tackle every challenge that comes your way?

If you answered yes to all of these, it probably felt pretty good. And, in fairness, these qualities are pretty desirable for those of us who work to be more productive.

We can be better than that, though. We can be more efficient. Because, yes, there is a catch here. If your capacity to barrel through to-dos carries over to knocking out tasks that, ultimately, aren’t necessary or aren’t directed at your priorities, you’re wasting vital energy. As productive as you feel in the trenches, when challenges or auxiliary tasks pop up in your path, the important thing is to see how they affect the big picture.

So, are you majoring in minor things? Here are five signs look out for:

• You constantly focus on tasks and don’t pay attention to your progress toward bigger goals
• You are constantly occupied by errands at home or at work and other people around you consider you inaccessible
• You start projects but struggle to finish them
• You focus on tasks and actions, but less on their implications in the long-term

The major things that matter

Quickly define: what does a strategist do? He or she focuses on the big picture, creates defined plans to get there, then oversees the execution of those plans. Right?

Just think, would you ever see a CMO cranking out subject lines for an email campaign? Unless we’re talking about a micro-business, the answer will be “no.” If a strategist focuses on anything in the minutia, or departs even a moment from the big-picture and overall roadmap for the sake of some detail, no one will have the big-picture in mind. It’s like sailing a ship without a captain.

You might not be a strategist, but you’re the captain of your destiny. This requires focusing on the big picture and having a plan on how to get to the goals you’ve charted out.

Take a moment to step back from all the distractions and the list of tasks, errands and responsibilities. Use this moment to think, and think deep. 

What is your vision? Why do you have this vision in the first place? Are the things you do every day getting you closer to realizing that vision? Are your tasks always important, or are you spending time on things that don’t move you toward specific goals?

If these questions start to point you to a vision of success that you still fall short of, take action! Focus on what you want and how to get there. Don’t fall into the trap of a false sense of accomplishment from confronting unimportant challenges.

Once you rediscover your vision and refine your map of how to get there, just put in the work. You might be just as busy as before, but this time, all the work will be driving you toward your goals.

At Sparkbox, majoring in major things is something our app was built to support. Our vision is to enable users to effortlessly collect, organize, and share information to the success of the unique projects they’ve built. That’s our goal, our vision. Providing this article and more like it[link to main blog page] for users is how we mapped out getting where we set out to go.