Last week, we defined what a routine is and brought out the benefits of having one. We also commenced discussions on the principles of creating a routine, which we will conclude today, and begin to take up how to create a routine.
Principles of creating routine in retirement cont’d:
Be serious and have fun! Achieving and maintaining good things in life require that we are serious, committed and persistent in what we do. Having a routine and living it requires that we are disciplined. But we should also have fun, within the limits of decency, legitimacy and morality, to smoothen out the rough edges of the efforts that we put in.
Reward yourself: From time to time, reward yourself with simple treats that you enjoy for getting things done in line with you objectives and set routine.
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Start the day strong: Depending on the individual, there are things that can be done to start the day strong. This might be an early morning physical exercise, some meditation of choice, etc.
End the day upbeat: We can get exhausted and tired by the end of the day. We may have even faltered and failed but we must end the day upbeat and ready to continue the following day on strong and positive notes. A retired person that has ‘been there, done that’, shouldn’t have any issues with this!
Consistency over perfection: As long as you are doing the right things, consistency and getting things done is what is key to long-run sustainable success rather than an obsession with perfection.
‘Keep it Simple’! Be as ambitious as you want in terms of your purpose and objectives. However, make your routine simple and versatile in terms of effectiveness and efficiency of execution.
Track your progress: Beyond having a routine and putting in effort, you will need to monitor the success of what you are doing. Depending on your objectives and what you do, choose the appropriate tools that can help you track your progress periodically.
Creating a routine: Creating a routine for retirement is a process that starts before and after retiring. Routine planning prior to retirement should be conceptual to the extent that you need to imagine the time you will have on hand vis-à-vis the activities you plan to be engaged in. Pre-retirement thoughts about routine will revolve around such things as deciding whether you will be taking up some part-time paid employment or providing some volunteer services to your community, as well as any hobbies you hope to take up when you retire. On the other hand, the post-retirement routine planning will be practical and tied to exactly what you will be doing partly based on your initial thoughts and plan before you retire and partly based on the realities that may have been thrown up at you.
Specifically, these are some of what you have to think through in creating a retirement routine for yourself:
What do you want to do? The first thing in creating routine is to decide your purpose in retirement and what you would broadly need to do as a result of that. As mentioned, part of that should have been decided before retirement while others would only come up after retirement.
List out everything: The broad ‘to do’ decided above needs to be broken into specific, actionable measures that can be taken one at a time over a period. At this point just list out all the activities as they come to your mind and not in any order.
Rank and scale the activities: Assign your valuation of how important each activity is in the scheme of your purpose and objectives. This valuation will be entirely personal and you can use any description to value each item such as ‘not important’, ‘important’, ‘crucial’, etc.
Schedule each activity: In scaling and ranking, you should taken out all unimportant and noisy activities. Of those that remain, some would be daily activities while others might be less frequent. Based on this periodicity, you draw up what will be daily activities as well as the weekly, monthly and annual.
Most of our discipline is built from how well we handle our daily activities. To help us, we should, therefore, draw up our daily activities as follows:
Start with the most important: A recommended way is for us to start our days with the most important activities. However, sometimes it may be pragmatic to start with some of the ‘less’ important ones to pave the way for us to face and focus on the more important.
Dovetail periodic activities: Your daily routine should be in harmony with your weekly, monthly and annual routines both in terms of their individual objectives and in execution.
Be ready for unforeseen interruptions: In drawing out your routine, you should allow for possible interruptions and delays. Do not choke up your day.
Try it out and make adjustments: The routine you draw should be tried for about two weeks to a month. This will give a real feel of what you need to alter and adjust. Keep refining it until you get what works, gives you peace of mind and makes you achieve your objectives and purpose.
‘Advertise’ your routine! I had an uncle who never got tired reminding anyone that he related with what his daily schedule was like. I realized from my uncle’s way that when you tell people your schedule, you make things easy for everyone. You save yourself and others a lot of avoidable interruptions and disappointments. You also guide others on how, when and where you could be available for engagememt with them if they so need. Hence, I suggest that you inform those that need to know what your ‘broad’ daily schedule looks like. Obviously, life happens to our schedules and there should be room to accommodate exigencies.
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