The most valuable currency in life is not the dollar or the euro…it’s time! We all have it, and we all have it in equal amounts each day. Yet, most of us go through life wasting it away. We want to show you how routines and habits can allow you to utilize your time in the best way to suite your lifestyle.

Having a solid foundation to your day will allow you to utilize your time the best. When you build up positive daily habits, they become a part of your day without having to think about it. When you sit around and think about your next move, it can take a lot of extra mental effort and time to decide what you are going to do. Habits allow those things to come naturally.

When you think about it in it’s simplest form, it makes a lot of sense. If you have to go to work at say 7 AM, you get out of bed and get ready with just enough time to start work at that time. When you don’t have to work the next day, you might sleep until noon. The reason you are doing this is because there is nothing in your routine causing you to wake up at a specified time. If you had a routine in place to go to the gym at 6 AM every day, it would cause you to wake up early and get started on your day. There has to be purpose in what you are doing though, or else you will consistently skip the task.

How in the world would habits and routines save me time in the day if I do most of those tasks anyways? It is pretty simple. You are able to utilize your time more effectively. Let me give a common example of someone who doesn’t have daily routines and someone who does.

Without routine:

Wake up late at 6:35 AM to rush to work to get there by 7 AM. Skipped breakfast today because you slept in.

Gets home from work at 3 PM. Eats a snack and turns on some Netflix. An hour passes. You contemplate going to the gym, but also realize you need to clean your home and take your dog for a walk.

Naturally, you gravitate to the task that comes easiest to you. In this example. lets say its vacuuming the house. You feel pretty good about that until you think about the other things you need to do.

It is 4:30pm, and you have to start thinking about dinner now as well. You decide to take the dog for a walk, but skip the gym. At least you got a couple things off the list right?

It is 5:30 PM, and now you need some “you time.” You sit on social media for 30 min to an hour. Then it is time for dinner. You lost motivation to cook, so you decide to go get fast food. Now you are mad at yourself because not only did you skip the gym, but you didn’t eat healthy either.

It is 7 PM, and now you need to spend some quality time with your spouse and/or kids. Before you know it, it is almost 9 PM and you have to get ready to go to bed. You think to yourself, maybe I will focus on my health tomorrow.

The next time you might make a healthy dinner in sacrifice for cleaning. Maybe you will go to the gym and neglect taking your dog for a walk. Either way, it constantly feels like there is not enough time to do what you want to. That’s no including doing extra curricular things like hobbies that make you happy. You usually spend your weekend catching up as well.

With routine: 

Wake up at 5:00 AM to go to the gym. You shower and have eggs for breakfast. You go to work not rushed, and you feel great.

You get home at 3 PM. You grab a granola bar and take your dog for a walk. After the walk, you are ready to take on a cleaning task around the house (you do something different for each day of the week). By the time you finished those things, it is 5 PM.

You spend some time decompressing on social media before you make dinner. You have a healthy meal planned out, so you make that and eat with the family. It is about 7 PM, and now you spend some quality time with your spouse and/or kids.

You feel great about all of the things accomplished today. You go to bed around 9 PM with a smile. You know that there are days when you don’t need to clean or cook, so those days you fill in with a hobby. Life is good and you feel like you are utilizing your time properly. You don’t spend the weekends playing catch up, but instead building relationships and enjoying your free time.

Obviously everyone’s routines and day to day might look different. It’s more about the concept. It is easier to utilize your time and find motivation to do tasks when the are pre planned. It takes away the “in between time” that is wasted thinking about what to do next or that is filled in with looking at your phone or watching Netflix. There is nothing wrong with social media or Netflix, but if you plan them in your life in moderation instead of filling spaces with it, you will utilize your time much better.

In summary, build your day to day around a routine with habits that support the lifestyle that you desire. If you feel happy and stress free at the end of the day, you are doing it right. If not, sit down and plan out a custom day to day like I laid out in the example. Set reminders, alarms, notes, or whatever you have to do to stay on task. Starting healthy habits is not easy, and will take at least a few weeks until it becomes second nature. After that, it’s just a part of life and you wont want to look back!