We hope you had a fabulous weekend! Ours was full of a little r&r&r (rest and relaxation and reflection!) and we hope yours was too. Our very first Tuesdays Together meetup was last week and like we said last Wednesday, it was so cool just to be around other creatives who are doing what we’re doing and who believe in community over competition just as much as us!
At our meetup, the topic of discussion was all about daily routines. We figured that since our daily routines go something like this:
1. check Instagram
2. work
3. everything and anything else
– that we didn’t really have much to share as far as definitive advice, time-saving tricks, or helpful habits.
I thought about this over the weekend and we definitely DO have advice, tricks, and habits! Even though we don’t have ‘daily’ routines (as far as business goes) we’re reflecting on those other routines and shedding some light on our strategies to develop habits below!
Blogging three times a week
Blogging regularly is one of the best routines that we have! Blogging is a way that we connect with our brides and potential clients and are happy to have our little piece of the internet to share our lives, our advice, and our events with you! We want to keep this up for as long as possible and if you are reading this right now, we are glad you’re here and we are so thankful for you!
Networking
We make it a point to go to every networking event we can. We’ll call this a routine because it’s something that is pretty much automatic. If it fits in our schedule, you’ll see us there! This should be a habit of any businessperson, budding or veteran, because connecting with other people is valuable. You never know who you’ll meet! You could meet us and wouldn’t that be pretty cool 😉
Always hustling
This isn’t so much a routine as it is a way of life. 😛
Our daily routines have been really ad-hoc meaning that we kind of just do whatever is most urgent or whenever we get that spark of creativity. But we’re always doing something, whatever it is! It works, but at the same time we aren’t really using our time to the best advantage. And sometimes that spark of creativity doesn’t come when you need it to, so you have to dive in and hope that it appears along the way. Building a business with a solid foundation takes a lot of hustle and a lot of motivation because most of the stuff we accomplish first is all behind the scenes! We’re always tweaking, learning, experimenting, adapting, and creating!
How You Can Have Successful Routines
Make it Meaningful
To do anything daily, you have to have solid motivation. Many people don’t stick to diets for very long when the goal is to look better. Once they achieve their ideal weight or look or whatever or maybe decide it’s not worth the struggle, they stop. When you have a deeper motivation such as wanting to live longer or set a good example for your kids, you make that goal a priority in your life. Those types of goals won’t fall by the wayside when you’re tired or lazy. Habits are stronger than apathy when they’re powerful enough – I mean, I am tired every morning but that doesn’t stop me from brushing my teeth. That also falls in line with the next strategy –
Do it Daily
For me, doing something daily is much easier than doing it every other day or once in a while. Making your routine something that you have to think about is just another obstacle to getting it done. In the book “The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business”, it talks about how and why habits form. You need a cue, the habit, and the reward. The best cue for me is to take something that I do every day, and create a different habit before or after it. After I wake up – check Instagram! After work, go work out! Creating a set daily routine makes something so ingrained that you won’t even have to think about it – you’ll just start doing it automatically.
Do The First Step In Advance
For blogging, knowing that our content helps others motivates us to keep going but we’ll be honest, some weeks are a struggle to get through. We know there has to be some way to make the blogging process a little bit easier or at least a little more streamlined! One thing that has helped us is to plan our posts in advance so that we are not brainstorming AND writing in the same day. You know when you have to do something and you’re avoiding it but once you start it’s not really that bad such as laundry or returning something to the store? Coming up with a blog post topic beforehand prevents that urge to procrastinate and helps ease us into writing the post. After coming up with the topic, it feels like we’re already halfway there 😛
Give Yourself Grace
We know that things happen, stuff comes up, and routines get monotonous. The purpose of creating habits is to make your life better and to use your time more effectively! Getting into the habit (:D) of a new routine takes time! And once you have gotten into it you’ll need a break from the norm eventually! Routines are meant to help you – not to stress you out!
Hope these tips are helpful and hope that you have a great week!