Your Daily Routine Is Gone. You Need to Replace It.

No one’s life is normal right now.

Some folks are sick or are caring for the sick. Most of us, though, are healthy and trying to stay that way. And while there are still plenty of things that must be done, for those of use who rely on a daily routine for productivity and sanity, it’s gotten a lot harder to do them. So, while acknowledging that there are way bigger problems in the world right now, let’s think for a moment about how we can recapture a sense of normalcy amidst chaos.

In good times and bad, we need structure in our day. It can be arbitrary structure—lunch at 11:30 sharp, a daily mid-afternoon walk around the block—but a wide-open schedule rarely results in a well-spent day. It results, instead, in way too much time spent reading anxiety-inducing news articles (ask me how I know). So, if you haven’t already, take a few minutes to create a temporary daily routine for yourself.

It can feel like now isn’t the time to be worrying about time management, but now is exactly the time. With so much uncertainty in the world, our ability to control what we can control (our time, and even more importantly, our attention) has a great deal of power over our quality of life.

Hard times never last. Life will eventually return to normal, and while it may be a new normal, life won’t always be the way it is right now. In the meantime, we at least have the power to shape our day.