I’ve probably said this before; I like routines.\u00a0 It’s soothing for me to have a plan.\u00a0 This doesn’t mean I won’t (or can’t) change my plans; nevertheless I enjoy making rough plans.\u00a0 For years, Thursday and Friday were my prime laundry days.\u00a0 I certainly had to change that for vacations and when the days filled up with other things, yet I would simply choose another more fitting day for that week.\u00a0 When I started taking a class, it made sense to completely change my laundry plan.\u00a0 I decided Tuesday and Wednesday would work better.<\/p>\n
The strangest thing happened – at the end of the week I felt tremendously lighter.\u00a0 It was like a load had been lifted (no laundry pun intended!).\u00a0 I was no stricter with myself about being flexible.\u00a0 I was simply less stressed.\u00a0 And I don’t have an explanation.\u00a0 Yet not understanding the logic of this doesn\u2019t make it less true.\u00a0 I feel tremendously better and months later, it holds true.<\/p>\n
This is something I would not predict \u2013 for myself or anyone else.\u00a0 We all have things we have to accomplish each week and each month.\u00a0 This is true whether we plan for those things or not.\u00a0 I certainly believe that we each have our own way of approaching things \u2013 from planning to how we handle our chores.<\/p>\n
It can be amazing the effect of making some small alterations to our behaviors. They cannot always be predicted or even predictable.\u00a0 This is one of the reasons I am a fan of trying things out, looking at things like an experiment and seeing what the effects are.\u00a0\u00a0 Years ago I did this with mowing the lawn.\u00a0 I varied all sorts of factors from the basics of whether I mowed the front or back yard first, to directions and height.\u00a0 This also revealed something rather strange to me – doing the backyard first left me more tired at the end.\u00a0 I see no logic to this, yet it held true over and over.\u00a0 If I had not experimented, I would not know this.<\/p>\n
Have you ever noticed a difference in your energy level when you are caught up \u2013 when you don\u2019t have tons of things left on your list to do?\u00a0 This is what I think about with the \u201ceat the frog\u201d idea \u2013 you do the most important and hardest things first each day.\u00a0 When I apply this, I feel more on top of things \u2013 I don\u2019t have them hanging over me, knowing I still need to get to them.<\/p>\n
These are some of the ways I notice changes happening around me.\u00a0 And those changes can have profound effects on me.\u00a0 As I\u2019ve talked about before, embrace change \u2013 the freedom to play with it in your life can open up doors you didn\u2019t even recognize before.\u00a0 This doesn\u2019t mean you need to regiment your life into routines (who wants that degree of control?), yet experiment and find your own way to be lighter and happier.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Our lack of routine can be just as much a routine as adamantly sticking to your plan \u2013 yet however you approach all those things you have to do, tweaking and playing with them can have unpredictable and rewarding effects. Experiment and discover for yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[10,8,18,5,9,7,22,4],"class_list":["post-1102","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-personaldevelopment","tag-behavior","tag-discipline","tag-goals","tag-household","tag-motivation","tag-procrastination","tag-productivity","tag-routines"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7p82c-hM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1102","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1102"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1102\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1106,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1102\/revisions\/1106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jenniferlinnig.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}