Five Steps to Transition into a New Routine Without Feeling Overwhelmed

Now that COVID-19 restrictions are lifting in some areas, including where I live, people are transitioning into new work, school, and home routines. When my kids and I go for a walk in the afternoon on the main road near our neighborhood, there are signs of rush hour traffic again. Sports activities have resumed and my social media feed is filled with my friends cheering on their kids at evening practices and weekend games. My husband is required to commute to his workplace more frequently, instead of simply walking upstairs to our bedroom. Summer is almost here, bringing not only with Brood X cicadas but also the end of school and the transition of child care requirements for parents, while they simultaneously navigate new requirements in their workplaces.

While we have longed for the day when things start to feel more “normal” it is important that we transition mindfully into this new season. I love the quote from Dave Hollis: “In the rush to return to normal, use this time to consider which parts of normal are worth rushing back to.” Although he said this back in April 2020, it is especially true now as we have the opportunity to decide what we want our new “normal” to look and feel like.

In my recent free workshop, I walked attendees through a five-step process that can help you transition into a new routine without feeling overwhelmed. I invite you to grab a pen and paper and work through these steps as well.

1. Assess what your days look like right now and how each activity makes you feel. If this seems daunting, just focus on one block of your day- for example, from the moment you wake up to when you have to go to work or take the kids to school. Do you feel rushed? Hurried? Short-tempered? Are you running around calling for your kids to “hurry up”? Do your kids wake you up or do you have some time to yourself beforehand? Here’s a simple printable you can use to track.

It is important that you are assessing rather than judging. This is not an exercise to make us feel bad about ourselves and what we’re “failing” at right now. You are observing and assessing your activities.

After you’ve tracked for a day, get out some highlighters and circle what is going well in one color and what isn’t going so well in another. Next, make a list on the back of the paper of a few things you want to get done in that time block but never do. In our example, this may look like journaling/devotion time, making your bed, or drinking your coffee in silence before the kids wake up.

2. Imagine your ideal (but realistic) day. It’s important that we visualize what we want our ideal day to look and feel like, but keeping the realities of our lives and families in mind. If it’s too much to visualize the whole day, start with the same time period as you did in Step 1. Look at the things you want to include in that part of the day but never do. Is there one thing that would be ideal to do every day? How do you feel in this scenario? Are you patient? Relaxed? Able to deal with things not going as planned with grace and even a bit of humor?

If this vision is far away from your current reality, don’t despair. It won’t happen all at once but (like most things) slow and steady. The next steps will help make this vision more of a reality for you.

3. Pick the top three things that make you feel successful. These can be the top three things that you want to accomplish in a given day, or in the time period that you’ve decided upon for this exercise. You may draw these things from what is going well for you right now, what you want to incorporate but haven’t, or from your ideal vision. The important thing is to recognize that this is your personal definition of success, no one else’s. They are the things that move the needle the most, not just the things that would be “nice to do”. In my mornings, my top three are exercising, making the bed, and starting a load of laundry. These are my non-negotiables. Meditating is nice, or perhaps drinking my tea when it’s hot, but those aren’t necessarily the needle movers of my mornings.

4. Remove unnecessary choices and decisions. This is arguably the most important step, and what I focus on within the workshop as well as my course. In order to make room for what makes us feel most successful, we have to eliminate unnecessary choices and decisions among those choices. Start with the things you can eliminate or shift from your highlighted list of what’s not working well for you. If you are scrolling your phone first thing in the morning but that is causing you to be rushed, schedule a time to intentionally scroll social media later in the day. If you are spending time making your kids’ beds, can you teach them to do it on their own because “done is better than perfect”?

What decisions can you eliminate or simplify? Can you have the same breakfast smoothie every morning for a week? Can you use a planned exercise program so you don’t have to decide what to do? Can you simplify your wardrobe so you don’t have to choose among so many clothes first thing in the morning? Remove the decisions that don’t matter so you can focus on what actually moves the needle in your life.

5. Figure out where you will fit in the top three things that make you feel successful. If you have a realistic list of what you’d like to include in a certain time block, and you have eliminated or shifted the things that are no longer working for you, you can work on developing rhythms or routines that allow you to incorporate these needle movers. Experiment with habit stacking using anchoring events. For example, I make the bed after I brush my teeth in the morning (well honestly, sometimes I just do it one-handed while I brush my teeth. Don’t tell my dentist).

Rhythms are a series of events that happen within a certain time block, while a routine is a sequence of events followed in a certain order. Whatever works best for you, start pairing the activities within your top three with anchor events that you’re already doing consistently. In my course, I work with my students to develop rhythms and routines and to track and assess how they are going so they can be tweaked as necessary.

It is important that we constantly assess how we are spending our time and energy, but especially during seasons of transition such as this one. By understanding our definition of success and removing the stuff, to-do’s, and limiting beliefs that keep us from realizing it, we can go through our days feeling more fulfilled and less overwhelmed.

If you are a mom of young kids, or know someone who is, I encourage you to check out my new course Moms Overcoming Overwhelm where I work with moms to define their personal vision of success, eliminate what doesn’t serve them, delegate what they can, and automate the rest. Enrollment closes soon!