How I Stay on Track (With the Perfect Balance of Routine & Flexibility)
I have been on my healthy habits journey for a few years now, and as of a few months ago, I would have told anyone how grateful I am to be living my dream life. But lately, I have been feeling incredibly burnt out and unmotivated to do anything creative, and if I’m completely honest, even the bare minimum to keep my life together.
If you are feeling a lack of motivation in work, school or just life in general, this blog is for you. I am a type-A girlie, and I like to have a plan, but over-structuring my day takes away the flexibility I need to thrive.
All the work I have put into shifting my mindset, the therapy I have gone through to unpack the deeper trauma and become more self-aware and the countless hours I have spent researching how to ditch motivation and turn things into a habit have not gone to waste, I’m just a little off track.
The more I journal how I feel around this “stall” in my journey, the more I realize that it might be over-structuring my day and falling into an unconscious pattern of habits that aren’t serving me.
Here is how I am getting back on track with the perfect balance of routine and flexibility in my schedule, habits and healthy lifestyle choices.
Morning routine
We are going back to basics with this one. Ask yourself: what makes me feel good? What sets up the rest of my day for success? Forget the 30-step morning routines you see all over TikTok and dial into what is realistic and helpful for you.
After simplifying, the building blocks of my morning routine look like this:
Wake up.
Do simple skin care.
Make a tea.
Walk my dog and spend some time in nature.
Eat one of my go-to balanced breakfasts.
Do a guided meditation, gratitude and affirmations.
Now, you might look at that list and think that it is NOT simple, but I have spent almost three years building up my morning habits, which is my holy grail. It happens most days (Sundays are a toss-up because I am usually in an extra lazy mood and add in a One Tree Hill episode) and takes about an hour.
Saying no & having boundaries
If you have followed me for a while, you will know that I call myself a recovering perfectionist and people pleaser. I would say “yes” to anything people asked of me for most of my life. As a result, I spent time I didn’t have with people I didn’t like doing things I didn’t want to do. This is also the tagline for Sarah Knight’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Not Giving a F**k, and boy oh boy, did it ever change my life.
Reading that book was the first time I started practicing saying no and setting boundaries aligned with what I valued. Spoiler alert: my world did not burn down when I started saying no! I am still working hard on this daily, but it has brought me so much peace in my work and personal life.
Dedicated work-away days
Working from home can become a Groundhog Day experience all to quickly. Waking up at the same time, doing the same morning routine, answering emails, going to meetings, eating lunch at your computer, client work, more emails, on and on! Not to mention how hard it is to “turn off” work when life and work all occur in the SAME space. It is easy to see how you can start feeling like you’re in a rut.
When I realized how much that rut affected my motivation to get up and love work, I knew I had to make a change. I started to schedule one day a week, yes actually put it in your calendar, where I would drive to my favourite coffee shop and crush my to-do list from there. I am actually sitting here right now writing this blog, eating the best gluten-free cookie of my life and sipping a yummy hot coffee!
At first, it can seem like a waste of time to drive somewhere and set up a workspace but if you are anything like me a change is scenery results in a huge boost in productivity so, it is completely worth it and now a mandatory part of my week.
My second brain (aka Notion)
I talk about Notion all the time, and sometimes I get asked, “but Shelby, it is just an app. How can it really make that big of a difference?” to those people, I say Notion has become my second brain.
I do everything from daily to-do lists to annual planning, brain dumps, journaling, expense tracking, milestone memories and running my entire business from my Notion pages. Having one place for all my random lists and essential for later thoughts has been a game changer. Consolidating all of my miscellaneous and expensive apps into this one hub didn’t happen overnight, but I am beyond grateful for how it turned out.
Now that I am a self-certified Notion nerd, I can share the app’s amazing features and capabilities with you. If you want to learn more about my simple-to-use, all-in-one Notion templates for work, school and real life check them out here.
Opening & Closing Shifts
If you have ever worked in a restaurant or cafe, you might have just shuttered at that headline, but I promise this is worth a read despite the PTSD. If this is a new idea for you, it is basically a list of tasks that gets done at the beginning of the day and one at the end.
I have been applying this principle to my house, and it is a resetting DREAM. Taking 15 - 20 minutes at opening and closing to set up or wind down from my day makes everything slightly more manageable.
Every morning, I put away the dishes that were air drying, fill up my doggo’s food and water dishes and wake up my espresso machine. And every night before I head to bed, I make sure the dishes are done and out of the sink, my pup’s toys are all back in her basket, the living room and my office is tidy, and our robot vacuum is all set to auto-clean the next day.
The moral of the story? Figure out what the balance of routine and flexibility looks like for you. Need an extra push to dig deeper? Follow me on Instagram and Tiktok @simplifywithbee for all the inspo.
