Bring a Little Balance to your Daily Routine – Two of Pentacles

Your daily routine can have a large impact on your state of mind. You might find yourself scrambling to get everything done or always late, you might have chunks of time where you just don’t know what to do with yourself. Maybe there’s so much you’d like or need to do that you have no idea where to start. All of it creates unnecessary stress.

Now I know that not everybody is a fan of lists, I certainly wasn’t until I was in a position where there was always impossible deadlines and endless backburner projects. Prioritization and scheduling took on a whole new level of importance and became a tool that I now use in both my personal and professional life.

Now that I’ve started a home-based business this is a skill that puts my downtime in perspective and helps me to manage my creative projects as well. I’m still struggling with the lack of structure that exists when you work for somebody else, and now I have a career that’s still early in it’s development stages so a lot of my time is spent researching and exploring what I’d like to add to the mix. It’s far too easy to procrastinate and downtime just feels wrong.

So how do you structure your day to improve your flow? Write it all down. Everything you do, everything you need to do, everything you want to do, put it all under headings of needs and wants then break it down into daily, weekly, monthly, and “back burner.” When you put it on paper it’s no longer floating around in your head so you can see it with a different perspective. You’ll be able to see what needs to be trimmed away and you might even see where you can combine things so you’re not repeating the same steps for several different tasks. Keep an eye out for the responsibilities you take on that belong to or can be delegated to others, and don’t forget to schedule a time where you don’t have anything to do but what makes you happy or gives you peace.