Routine is Comfort Food for the Soul

Lighter AND Wiser

As of the writ­ing of this post, I’ve lost 45 pounds. Yes. Delib­er­ately. By choice and by plan.

Thanks. I’m not telling you this for con­grat­u­la­tions (although I do appre­ci­ate the thought). Rather, I have a story to tell related to the weight loss.

Three months ago, when I began this par­tic­u­lar jour­ney, it was not a dif­fi­cult deci­sion to make. For a vari­ety of rea­sons that will totally bore you as much as they bore me, my weight was out of con­trol. I was at the heav­i­est I’ve ever been in my life. I was also liv­ing alone in a new city begin­ning a new phase in my life. You might think that adding in the stress of a major weight loss ini­tia­tive (I refuse to use the D word) was crazy, but not so. I was ready. I was alone. I was once again liv­ing in a place with a kitchen that had no food (just moved, I men­tioned that, right?) So the tim­ing was per­fect. For me.

The pro­gram I’m fol­low­ing rec­om­mends five small meals of their low-​​calorie food spread out through the day and a “lean and green” real food meal once a day. Hon­estly, I rarely make it through five meals — the best I can man­age is 4 plus the real food.

For the first time in my life, I am actu­ally eat­ing break­fast. Granted, it’s still at least two hours after I get up in the morn­ing before I can stom­ach any food, but I am eat­ing my yummy oat­meal every morn­ing. And at about 10 I have a morn­ing snack. At about 1 I have lunch. And between 3 and 4 I have an after­noon snack. By 6 I have eaten my Lean and Green din­ner and am done eat­ing for the day. Not a very excit­ing dietary intake, but efficient.

I was quite sur­prised to real­ize that in a short time, only a cou­ple of weeks, I had dropped com­fort­ably into the rou­tine I just described, and even more sur­prised at how well it fit into my daily work and play sched­ule. (Well, I work from home and live alone — mostly I have a work schedule.)

Three months into the pro­gram and 45 pounds lighter, Christ­mas arrived as did a week with com­pany vis­it­ing from up North.

I don’t always make the wis­est deci­sions, but I have lived long enough to know when NOT to deprive myself. I gave myself per­mis­sion to eat as my guests ate and went off the pro­gram for one week. I con­fess it was won­der­ful. I made damn sure that I ate every­thing that I craved. Sur­pris­ingly, I did not go over­board. And an even big­ger sur­prise, I did not crave fast food.

Well, com­pany has gone home and true to the promise I made to myself, I returned to my weight loss pro­gram. And here’s the moral to the story. I dis­cov­ered that I had missed my rou­tine! I actu­ally enjoy those four (or five) small meals dur­ing the day. I am more pro­duc­tive and feel healthy, ener­gized, and dis­gust­ingly virtuous.

I have real­ized a great truth:

Hav­ing a rou­tine to fol­low is com­fort food for the soul.

Does your daily rou­tine as you work in your home office feed your soul? Are you tempted to throw orga­ni­za­tion out the win­dow and reject daily rou­tine because you work from home? Big mistake.

A rou­tine by def­i­n­i­tion is cus­tom­ary, com­mon­place tasks, chores, or duties. Too much rou­tine leads to bore­dom, true. How­ever, the right mix of flex­i­bil­ity and rou­tine will actu­ally make you more effec­tive in your pro­fes­sional and per­sonal life. The right rou­tine is crit­i­cal for those of us who work from home.

What is the right mix, you ask? Your rou­tine reflects per­son­al­ity, work and play pref­er­ences, the struc­ture of out­side forces you must answer to, and the stress level you can tol­er­ate with­out look­ing for the near­est ostrich farm for avail­able holes to put your head into. So I can’t fully answer this question.

But you can. And should. Rou­tine is com­fort food for the soul.

Con­sider these sug­ges­tions and work those that fit into your daily home office routine:

Sched­ule It!

Cre­ate a reg­u­lar sched­ule and stick to it as much as pos­si­ble. If you have kids or cus­tomers and ven­dors com­ing to your door, this is actu­ally pretty easy. But if you some­times go for days with­out see­ing a human face close enough to touch, then you REALLY need a sched­ule. And one that takes you out of the house at least once a day. Get a dog. They have to be walked.

Divide and Conquer

Divide your work and play time. Many suc­cess­ful peo­ple choose com­part­men­tal­iz­ing and that is a good thing. Find a bal­ance. Define your work hours. At the end of the day as you’ve defined it, close the cover of the damn lap­top. Your soul is nour­ished by rou­tine but also by down time to replen­ish your enthusiasm.

Break it up

Build time for relax­ation into your work day. Show of hands, please. How many of you work right through lunch? Go to the kitchen, grab a left-​​over slice from the night before, don’t even heat it in the microwave and keep on working?

Um. Humm. Be hon­est. OK. That’s better.

Well, stop it right now. Make time in your rou­tine to eat a proper meal at least once dur­ing the day. And that means not at your desk and not mak­ing calls. It’s a great time to lis­ten to a pre-​​recorded tele­con­fer­ence or audio class. Or catch up on the mag­a­zines pil­ing up on your end table. There are rea­sons that the Gov­ern­ment requires breaks dur­ing the work day. So pay atten­tion and give your­self a break.

Rou­tine is by Choice

Unlike a habit which can be dif­fi­cult to change, rou­tines morph with­out our even real­iz­ing it because one rou­tine is sub­tly replaced by another. Has this ever hap­pened to you? One day you real­ized that what you used to do worked and what you do now does not? Yeah, it’s hap­pened to all of us. So what do you do about it?

Well, remem­ber that you con­trol your rou­tines, not the other way round. Give some thought to the ebbs and flows of your day. When are you most cre­ative? Morn­ing? After Lunch? When­ever it is, make sure that your rou­tines are not dic­tat­ing that you are read­ing email or fil­ing papers dur­ing that cru­cial cre­ative time.

Rou­tine feeds more than the soul. Rou­tine feeds your effi­ciency and effec­tive­ness in per­form­ing tasks. And when you are self employed and work­ing from home, you have no excuse not to take con­trol of and find com­fort in your home busi­ness routine.

What’s in your rou­tine? What could you add to turn your rou­tine into com­fort food for the soul? Do you have tricks you use to make your work­space effi­cient? We’d love to hear your ideas and other read­ers can use them as well.

Look for more of CaZ else­where on the web at writ​ing​bytes​.com.