How to Establish a Routine Using Blocks of Time

In order for your days to have order, it is important to have a routine. You can read about the importance of having a routine here.

There are many ways to establish a routine. You can be very specific with the time in which a task is done, or you can map out blocks of time. I use blocks of time to establish a routine. The advantage with blocks of time is that most of the time, you don’t have to pinpoint the exact time to finish a task; so there is much more flexibility and room for spontaneity. For me, more flexibility means more do-ability and less stress.

In this post, I am going to run through how I use blocks of time to establish a routine.

(1) First thing I do is, I come up with a vision for my family. What all things do I want happening in the family?

Example, I definitely want to provide healthy, home cooked food. (We never order food from outside, and we only rarely dine out). I also want a reasonably clean and organized house that is warm and welcoming in case guests pop in. I also want healthy, vibrant family relations, and spiritual life. I then brain dump all the things I need to do on a daily basis, to have the house in a functional condition that facilitates good workflow and efficiency,  homeschool, take care of family, have healthy cooked food on the table, and personal enrichment. For me, I cannot function smoothly and efficiently if the house is in chaos. So, for me, it mainly narrows down to personal prayer, personal hygiene, homeschool time, cooking, dishes, laundry, general cleanup, and quality time with family. I then make a list of these items that I need to do every day for this ‘vision’ to happen; or in other words, ‘essential’ things to do every day.

(2) Next, I map out times of my day that I can do these tasks.

Identify blocks of time. It doesn’t necessarily have to say  ’12:15 pm to 3 pm’. It could be as vague as ‘early afternoon’, although you have to put in exact times where you need to. Example, if there is an extracurricular activity for which you need to leave the house, you will definitely need to identify the exact time.

(3) I then group the tasks into blocks of time, aiming to achieve a natural workflow.

This is a sample of our daily routine(which changes during the climatic seasons, seasons of life, temporary projects etc). Our morning routine will consist of personal prayer, personal hygiene, fixing breakfast, unloading dishwasher and morning devotions. Then is the Homeschool time (we have a completely separate routine for homeschooling). Around noon time, we fix/eat lunch, load and run the dishwasher and do a laundry check. Then the babies nap. Around 3 pm, we finish homeschooling and then have our chore time. This includes basic cleanup of the house (including vacuuming, brooming, mopping, dusting, kitchen and bathroom counters when needed), dinner prep, laundry, and rapid decluttering. By 3:30pm, the kids are free to have 30 minutes of TV time. They then have playtime, either outdoors  or indoors. We have dinner around 7 pm. After dinner, everyone helps cleanup, bathe, and resume with quiet activities- usually reading or quiet play. We then have family time, and evening prayer.

What I mean by natural workflow, is this: If your baby sleeps better at around noon time than 3 pm, adjust the rest of the tasks so as to accommodate the naptime into the noon block. If your children learn better early morning, have them go to bed earlier and wake up earlier. If you find it more consistent to do Bible reading in the evening, map out the time for the evening. Whatever comes naturally for you, is what you should go with. But once you figure the routine, try to stick with it.

Establishing a routine may not come naturally, and you may need to intentionally work on it. It is sort of like developing a new habit. Sometimes you will have to add in 1 task at a time. Be diligent to implement it daily until it becomes a habit. Once you fill in all the items in your essentials list, you should have established a routine!

Basically, figure out what all essential things you need to do daily to keep up with all the required work, and group them together into blocks of time, in a way that facilitates natural workflow.

(1) While setting up a routine, one thing that is very important is that you should not put too many things on the list, as it is very important to leave enough margin. Just incorporate the very basic things you need to function daily to meet the essentials. This way you will have enough margin to accommodate a variety of flexible tasks,  guests, projects etc. If you just have time to do only the essential daily routine tasks, it will be very mechanical, with no variety or room for spontaneity. If you don’t have enough margin or ‘buffer’, you will easily get overwhelmed and fail to enjoy the real beauty of life, by not being able to embrace unforeseen events.

(2) You have to develop your own standard routine based on your own unique dynamics than settling for ‘some’ standard routine. Everyone’s circumstances are different, and you should be striving to find what works best for you.

(3) I find that when using blocks of time,  it is much better to keep ‘like’ things together. Eg: If there are tasks I need to be more mobile around the house, I lump them together; Tasks I need a digital platform, I lump together etc.

(4)You may end up having a different routine different days of the week, or even times of the year, or even different seasons of life. That’s perfectly ok. Example, some days, we have extracurricular activities, and things will look different that day. Also in summer, it will be much different, as I allow kids to play longer outdoors, even after dinner (part of the reason being, they can only start playing after 7 pm, in the hot, sunny Texas!).

Make sure your routine incorporates what is most important to you, with your vision of what you want for your family.

Action Plan:

Try to put together a routine plan, by listing all the basic things you want to do as part of routine, making sure not to overpopulate the list, so as to leave enough margin.  Lump them together into different time frames or blocks of time aiming for an easy and natural workflow. Try doing this consistently for a week or two. Feel free to play around until you find out what works best for you. In a week or two, you should have established your own unique routine!