Routine, the Great Weight Lifter – Lay Aside Every Weight
My friend, former procrastinators, says lack of routine is our greatest time waster. It’s also a great energy zapper. Now I think it’s one of the heaviest weights we lug around.
Many schools begin in August, so we give attention to routine at this time of year. Whether you send school kids off on a bus, drive them, send them to the computer, or meet them at the kitchen table, there’s a time to report in for the workday. Yet there’s a whole lot of work that takes place before the school day starts. Routine helps us handle that work smoothly. It also helps us handle work at the end of the day.
If you’re not familiar with the joys of routine, I urge you to try it. I don’t advocate tightly structuring every moment of the day. That was smothering to me. However, routine helps us accomplish the most important things – and I do want that.
Imagine the weight lifted from the shoulders of a kiddo who gets to bowl at an alley that supplies bowling bumpers for children. No stress. No fear of her ball scooting off into the gutter and thus missing all the pins. The ball hits the bumper that fills the gutter and the ball is automatically steered back into the lane so it hits the pins. Routine is like bowling bumpers. We hit the routine and our ball stays in the lane. We don’t run off into the gutter and fail to hit the pins, our priorities. No discouragement.
Does your way of doing things create stress or relief? Routine can move you into relief.
Lack of routine creates a heavy weight for us to lug around. Not having a regular way of doing things effectively creates constant drag on us. We must daily rethink how to do something and exercise extra discipline to do it. Undone tasks intrude on our thinking. Scattered throughout the day, they interfere with other things that must be done.
Routine lifts weight from our shoulders. It gives us confidence that we’ve tended to priorities. It frees our minds for other things. It minimizes workloads. It develops life skills and teamwork.
How does lack of routine weigh you down? How does effective routine lift a load for you?
