Design Around the Life You Have
Sometimes the problem isn’t your routine. It’s where you’re trying to put it.
You can have a perfectly reasonable plan. Exercise for 20 minutes, tidy the kitchen every night, prepare tomorrow’s things before bed…and still struggle to do it consistently. And it’s easy to assume that means you need more discipline.
But what if the routine itself is fine? What if it just doesn’t fit the life you’re trying to put it into?
I think we spend a lot of time trying to make ourselves fit our routines. What if instead, our routines should fit us?
A Good Routine Can Still Be a Bad Fit
There are endless examples of routines we’re told will make our lives better. We’ve all heard that we should wake up early and exercise. That we should spend Sunday afternoon meal prepping. Clean the kitchen every night before bed. Plan your day first thing in the morning. Take a walk after dinner.
None of those are bad ideas. (In fact, I wish I could do all of them!) But that doesn’t mean they’re good ideas for you, at that particular time, in your particular life.
Yes. You technically could wake up at 5:30 to exercise, but you’re already not getting enough sleep. I know I’m not. Sunday afternoon might be when your family is busiest. You could be exhausted by the end of the night, and the last thing you want to do is clean the kitchen. Or your evenings could be unpredictable, so that after-dinner walk happens about once every three weeks.
When a routine doesn’t fit, we often keep trying to force it. We set reminders. We recommit. We tell ourselves we’ll be better about it next week.
But before you work harder at making yourself follow the routine, there’s another question worth asking: Does this routine actually fit my life?
Stop Starting With When You Should Do It
I think this is where a lot of routines go wrong. We decide when something should happen before looking at when it would actually be easiest to do.
Exercise should happen in the morning. Planning should happen Sunday night. Cleaning should happen at the end of the day.
But who decided?
Instead of starting with the supposedly ideal time, look at your actual day. When do you usually have a little time? When do you have the most energy? When are you least likely to be interrupted? When are you already in the right place? When are you already doing something that naturally leads into the thing you want to do?
The best place for a routine isn’t necessarily the place where an expert would put it. It’s the place where you’re most likely to actually do it.
Pay Attention to Your Energy, Not Just Your Calendar
Having 30 free minutes doesn’t necessarily mean you have 30 usable minutes. That’s something I think traditional planning sometimes misses.
You might technically have time to do something at 8:30 at night. But if you’re completely drained by then, that may be a terrible place to put something that requires focus or motivation.
Meanwhile, you might have 15 minutes earlier in the day when you naturally have more energy. On paper, the 30-minute window looks better. In real life, the 15-minute window might win every time.
So when you’re trying to find a place for something in your life, don’t just ask: When do I have time?
Also ask: When would this feel easiest?
That’s a very different question.
Look for What’s Already Happening
One of the easiest ways to make a routine fit your life is to stop giving it its own separate place. Attach it to something that’s already there.
If you want to remember something in the morning, can it go next to something you already pick up every morning? If you want to stretch more, could you do it while you’re waiting for something else? If you want to tidy a particular area, could you do it when you’re already walking through that room? If you want to remember a daily task, could it happen immediately before or after something you almost never forget?
Your life already has a structure. You wake up. Eat. Work. Drive places. Make coffee. Brush your teeth. Feed pets. Pick up kids. Get ready for bed.
Instead of creating an entirely new structure for every habit you want to add, look for places where the new thing can fit into the structure that’s already there.
Notice Where the Routine Keeps Breaking
Sometimes your failed attempts are actually giving you useful information.
Your plan might work beautifully Monday through Thursday and fall apart every Friday. You might be able to do something easily when you’re working from home but never when you have to leave the house. The routine might work when you’re well rested but disappear after a bad night’s sleep. Or everything could go smoothly until someone else needs something from you.
Instead of treating those moments as proof that you’re inconsistent, get curious about them.
What’s different on the days this doesn’t work?
That’s often where the redesign starts.
Friday might need a different version. If you’re leaving the house, something may need to happen earlier. Tired days could need a five-minute version. Or the routine might need to happen before everyone else starts asking for your attention.
You don’t necessarily need to become better at following the plan. The plan might need to become better at handling your life.
Give Yourself More Than One Version
I especially like this idea because real life isn’t the same every day. Why should your routine be?
You can have a regular version and a busy-day version. A 30-minute workout and a 10-minute version. A full kitchen reset and a “just get the dishes into the dishwasher” version. A normal morning routine and a “we have to leave in 15 minutes” routine.
The smaller version isn’t cheating. It’s part of the design.
Because if your routine only works on the days when you have enough time, enough energy, nothing unexpected happens, and everyone cooperates…that’s not a very resilient routine.
A good routine should have somewhere to go when life gets messy.
Don’t Build a Routine That Requires a Different You
This might be the biggest one. It’s tempting to design routines for the person we think we’re going to become.
Future Me will wake up earlier. (I can’t tell you how many times I’ve tried that…and failed.) Future Me won’t mind doing this at night. Future Me will remember (Spoiler: I won’t.) Future Me will have more energy. Future Me will finally become consistent.
And Future You may change some things. But you don’t need to wait for that person to make your life work better.
Start with the person who’s here now.
If you hate mornings, don’t automatically build a system that depends on you suddenly loving mornings. If you regularly forget something, don’t create a plan that depends on remembering it. If you’re exhausted at the end of the day, don’t put three important habits there and then wonder why they aren’t happening.
That’s not giving up on yourself. It’s using good information.
Your Routine Is Allowed to Change When Your Life Changes
Even a routine that fits beautifully right now may stop fitting later.
Work schedules change. Kids’ schedules change. Energy changes. Seasons change. Responsibilities change. You change.
That doesn’t mean the routine failed. It means it’s time to look at the system again.
Something that worked six months ago doesn’t get permanent ownership of a spot in your life just because it used to work. You can move it. Shrink it. Attach it to something else. Replace it. Or decide you don’t need it anymore.
Your routines are supposed to support your life. Your life doesn’t exist to support your routines.
Find One Routine That Doesn’t Quite Fit
For me, the latest one has been when I do the dishes. For as long as I can remember, I’ve done them after brushing my teeth at night, right before getting into bed.
But over the past few years, that has stopped working. By then, I’m 100% exhausted. Once I’ve finished getting ready for bed, all I want to do is get IN bed and go to sleep.
The problem is, I still need clean dishes in the morning. So I either do them when I’m exhausted and miserable because I desperately want to be in bed, or I tell myself, Oh, I’ll just do them tomorrow.
And you can probably guess how well that works. 🙂
The next morning, there are inevitably things we need that aren’t clean, so I end up hand washing them. The rest of the dirty dishes are still sitting there, and because I’ve spent years thinking of dishes as something I do at night, I usually don’t think to run the dishwasher during the day.
Then nighttime comes around again. There are even more dishes waiting for me…and I’m exhausted again.
I haven’t completely solved this one yet. But I have figured out something important:
The problem isn’t that I can’t make myself do the dishes. The routine just doesn’t fit where I’ve put it anymore.
So now I’m trying to find a better place for it in my day.
You don’t need to redesign your entire day after reading this. Actually, please don’t. 🙂
Just think about one thing you’ve been trying to do consistently that never seems to stick.
Then instead of asking: Why can’t I make myself do this?
Try asking: What about this doesn’t fit my real life?
The timing could be wrong. It could be happening in the wrong place. It might require more energy than you have then. There could be a predictable interruption. Or the routine itself might simply be too big.
Then change one part. Move it to a different time. Attach it to something you’re already doing. Create a smaller version. Make it easier to start.
And see what happens.
Because sometimes you don’t need a better routine. You just need one that fits the life you actually have.
Want to Design Something Around Your Real Life?
If you’ve been trying to make something work and it just isn’t fitting, Designed for Real Life can help you figure out what’s getting in the way and redesign it around your actual schedule, energy, environment, and responsibilities.
You don’t have to become more disciplined or pretend your days are more predictable than they are. You can build something that works with the life you’re already living.
