Why are routines so hard to break?
How many times have you promised and then you have not been able to fulfill it? This could be in your personal life, deciding to join a gym, or in your professional life, signing up for a new class and learning a new skill. When he signed up, he was excited, ready to take on a new assignment. You paid the deposit, signed the paperwork, and maybe the event went to a few classes. But somewhere along the way, you lost motivation and stopped following through on this commitment.
Understanding why you can’t keep a commitment requires one to understand change. A new commitment is a new change in your life and the change interferes with the established routine. In this article, we’ll discuss why getting into a routine is so easy and convenient for so many people.
If you work from 9 to 5, you may have a set daily routine. You wake up every morning at 7:00. You get ready at 7:30 and finish breakfast at 8. You get in your car and have a 45-minute drive to work, where you arrive at 9:00 to start your workday. Ideally, leave work at 5:00 and get home at 6:00 if there is no traffic. You make dinner and at 7:00, you sit down to watch TV and eat. By the time you finish, it’s already 8:00 and you start preparing for the next day. It’s easy to follow and you don’t have to think about what to do next.
Everyone has some kind of routine, be it daily, weekly or monthly. Is a streamlined process and enables efficiency in your day-to-day tasks. Your mind works subconsciously to help you get through the day and you don’t have to actively think about what to do next.
However, because you have gotten so used to it, it makes new commitments difficult to keep. A commitment means breaking the routine and finding time to schedule the new activity.
To figure out how to fit a new activity into your current routine, actively track what you’re doing. This will show you where and when you have time. While it can be hard to get started, if you put in the same amount of time every day or every week, it will become a habit.