Rituals for a Productive and Balanced Life (sort of)

I have been on this journey of self improvement for the past 7 months now, and I have read a few books and seen in a lot of videos the importance of a routine.

Motivation is a myth

All through waking up to going down to sleep again a routine is what keeps you in discipline. People talk about motivation and how important it is. But the problem with motivation is that it fades away, sometimes in a day or two, sometimes in a week, a month or someday in the future, it just has to die down. And then your brain 🧠 talks to you, talk you into missing just one day, urges you to take it easy. ” it’s just one day you are missing, it won’t matter in the long run.” ” You have been relentless in your pursuit, you deserve a day off.”

You allow yourself to miss one day and if you miss one you might as well miss two, and then you fall into the trap, the trap that procrastinates the hell out of you and you slip out of your routine into laziness again “motivation is a myth, my friend.”

Discipline on the other hand is the key to getting things done. When you are down, not getting the results you expected and the motivation is drying down, discipline keeps you at it, and discipline is the only thing that will help you succeed.

A perfect day in the making

After 7 months of reading and surfing YouTube (the first time with an aim in mind) and following a lot of morning routines, routines that talk about the flow state, the trending 75 hard challenge ( it is really hard to be honest I am not built for it, not now at least), understanding the technical jargon of a routine, and things that help or hinder a routine (a habit) and after a lot of permutation and combination, I believe I have figured out a routine, a perfect routine tailor made for me. I get up between 5:20-5:40 in the morning and sleep at around 11:00 at night, I have experienced a more fulfilling life than I have in a long time more on the routine later.

The references

The initial step 🪜

8 months back, 2am on a Sunday morning when I was surfing on the internet 🛜 because I couldn’t sleep 💤 I stumbled on a video about how dopamine is ruining me, then another video of the benifits of the dopamine detox. It took me a few weeks but I decided to change things around and took to reading a book from the reference of a video, that book gave me my first routine and I am glad I read that book, I have covered that book and my detox journey in two previous posts here are the links to both of them.

The journey since

Since my first routine I have taken pieces 🧩 to integrate in my perfect routine from books 📚 and videos like

• Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones -James Clear
• Someday Is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life – Matthew Dicks
• Storyworthy: Engage, Teach, Persuade, and Change Your Life Through the Power of Storytelling – Matthew Dicks (this though, is a  recent addition to my routine, and yes I am in love with Metthew Dicks 😅)
• How to train your mind – Chris Baliey
• Huberman’s Lab podcast – Dr. Andrew Huberman
• A lot of stoic philosophy reading mostly of Marcus Aurelius
• YouTube videos

The role model

Before getting into the routine, your day is filled with daily decisions and choices that you have to make always take those, based on how your role model will take them, stoic philosophy suggests that a role model is necessary it may be someone you see, meet or want to be like, or an imaginary ideal person for your goals, Matthew Dicks has a 100 years old version of himself he sort of asks before taking any decission, for me it is a perfect older version of me ( I am a narcissist, I couldn’t help it 🤣🤣)

The routine

Every decision I make is an attempt to be that ideal person, that ideal version of me I have seen in my mind’s eye ever since reading Someday Is Today: 22 Simple, Actionable Ways to Propel Your Creative Life.

Here is what my routine looks like:

• Getting up at around 5:20 ⏰ am everyday, even during the weekends or the days off 📴 without fail. Even if I sleep late at night I don’t want to delay my wake up time by more than 15 minutes (5:35am) for this I use a physical alarm clock ⏰ and not my mobile phone.
• A 10 minute brisk walk, brisk walks signal the brain that you are happy and feeling happy will help you be productive.
• A cold shower of about 2 minutes gets me up and running for the day it is said to release dopamine, adrenaline and make a person more alert and that is great I guess for focus and productivity in general.
• 5-10 minutes of meditation, that again is done to make me more productive also I have found that it keeps me less irritable and more emotionally in check.
• Then I get to my daily activities.
• Between 7:00-7:30 is the best time of the day for me as I take my coffee, according to Dr. Huberman is the ideal time for coffee (90-120 minutes after getting up.) Helps me focus better and helps, avoid the afternoon crash.
• Then I am off to work, I have 2-3 lectures per day on average, with clinical duties.
• Now my role model is a better older  version of me, and to achieve that while in my clinic I read about 1-2 research articles daily.
• When I have had enough articles under my belt for the day and if I still have time I reach out for self-help books I have in my drawer. ( currently I am reading the Alchemist) I have audible, kindle and paperback books I prefer using them for different books. In college though I stick to paperbacks.

• I always have my lunch with my wife, who has her office 5 floors above mine.
• After the college, as soon as we sit in our car and leave the gate of our working premises, we almost never talk about work, it is a way to ensure our personal life is not affected by our professional life.
• According to Marcus Aurelius evenings are to be spent with family, that is what I do, I take my daughter to walks, I play with her and I watch her grow. Since the last two months I haven’t missed one day of this part of my day, I would miss everything, but this, because my little girl is growing fast and soon she will grow out of it and I will regret not having enough of this time with her. I don’t want to regret this.
• We cook at around 7:00 and eat by around 8:00 or maybe stretch it to around 8:30 pm. This is the time I see something on streaming platforms, my wife listens to something on an app on her phone, my daughter watches Cocomelon, and I watch some functional drama these days I am watching episodes of the medical drama HOUSE. I would want us to watch the same thing as a family but my daughter doesn’t watch The powerpuff girls neither does my wife so sadly we are on our own at this time.
• I sleep at around 11 pm so I have a lot of time before that roughly about 2 hours so I use it writing. As of now it’s 10:38 pm and I am sitting on my bean bag and writing this blog post. According to stoic reading, we must plan the next day before we sleep, so that is what I do and hence next morning I am not like a lost sheep searching for directions, I know what to do, where to get to, because I have planned it the night before.
• My sleep was fixed by Matthew Dicks’ book 📖. I have understood that beds are meant just to 💤 sleep, and my body understands it as well, I only lay down on my bed 🛏️ when I need to sleep and not at any other time, since my body has understood this, my restlessness on the bed has almost vanished, I sleep within 5-7 minutes of being in my bed, I prefer using brown noise to sleep as it has a soothing affect on me, I feel relaxed and am able to sleep soon and sleep better I suppose. I stop the use of my phone at around 10 pm, people say that it  improves the quality of sleep, and I do agree. This gives me around 6 to 6 hours 30 minutes of uninterrupted good quality sleep 😴 ( If my daughter decides not to interrupt it.) Sadaguru said the body doesn’t need sleep it needs restfulness, and 6 hours works well for me 🙂
• And the same thing repeats the next day.

I have to add a few more things to the routine like the homework for life segment from the book Storyworthy. But this is what a basic weekday looks like for me.

The little things that matter ⏰⏱️

The most used app on my phone 📱 these days is not Instagram or WhatsApp it is the clock, stopwatch ⏱️ and the alarm clock ⏰ to be precise, I use stop watch with everything I do to try to beat the clock and save sometime so that I have more time to do things like writing a poem, writing blogs, writing a new song, reading a new book, singing around, being with my family. There is a lot we can do with the leftover time, and I choose to do just that.

My alarm clock has 6 alarms to stop my procrastination dead in its tracks and they work in reverse order (this idea is copied from a YouTube video but it really works.)

• 6th alarm is of 5:20 am
• For getting up on time I have to sleep on time so the 5th alarm goes off at 10:00 pm when I leave my phone in the living room and plan for tomorrow.
• For me to be able to do that on time I need to eat by around 8 and for that I need to be cooking on time so the 4th alarm goes off by 7:00 and we get to cooking 🍳🔪.
• The 3rd alarm is the one I don’t want to miss, from 6pm the clock belongs to my daughter we play, we sing, we run and do whatever she wants to do with me these days we play football ⚽, the smile on her face each time she kicks the ball is precious 💕.
• The 2nd alarm goes off 10 minutes before the college ends so that I am ready to leave as soon as it is 4:00 pm
• The first alarm goes off when I have to meditate. It is silly but I do it because I often forget to meditate, I am lazy I often leave this highly effective and important habit out but the alarm helps jolt my memory

I don’t want to miss any alarm but if I do ( had to attend a party, or maybe guests came and we couldn’t cook) we know the next alarm will bring another activity and if we do that on time we are back on schedule.

Conclusion

It is always better to have a routine, a schedule, it helps you keep track of things, track your progress, and stay on course, this is just an overview of what works for me it may work for you, or you may come up with something better, do whatever you want to but, start a routine from today, a routine with long term goals in mind it will surely help you reach there and cultivate in you discipline, perseverance, I hope you reach wherever you stive to reach.