How many of us feel like life is escaping through a haze of weekly demands? There is often simply too much to do to sustain our lives and our lifestyles, and there either aren’t enough hours in each day or our limited energy levels mean we have to prioritise what’s important. On top of work and errands, trying to fit rest and other leisure into a seemingly overwhelming workload feels almost impossible.

One antidote to managing a busy schedule is a routine. It’s a topic that has been the centre of dialogue among many productivity gurus for years, but is it really as effective as it’s promised to be? They don’t magically slow down time, but they do set up a blueprint, from which we can slot leisure and rest, making our weeks more manageable. By setting a plan and mapping out a timetable of the tasks for your day, and even your long-term goals, you can have something to set your focus on for what lies in front of you. 

In this article, we’ll explore how to create an effective routine that can bring more balance, order and harmony to your life.

Plan your routine in a diary

One of the best ways to provide a blueprint of your week ahead is to write it in a 2025 diary. By entering all of your commitments such as work, sports training, kids pick-ups, dinner dates and so on, you can now see what your week looks like from a bird’s eye view. When you have all your must-dos for the week mapped out, you can enter all of your desirables. This might include making a yoga or gym class once a week, taking the dog to the beach on Saturday morning or finally getting to those catch-up plans.

By writing these down, it will make your routine feel more manageable and even exciting. You also have a better idea of when you are free and can make plans accordingly.  It also makes it easy to remember everything you have on for the week, and less likely to hold them off or make excuses. 

Your routine doesn’t need to include your morning rituals, just keep it to the main events of the week that you don’t want to forget.

Start small and build up

We all know the saying about Rome’s construction, the same can be said about your creation of a schedule or a routine. If there are activities you’re eager to add to your daily, weekly, or monthly routine, you can begin to add them in when it feels right. Whether it’s something as domestic as cleaning your house or something as adventurous as starting bouldering sessions, it can help to break it down into smaller targets. 

When you compartmentalise the mountain that is your to-do list into smaller tasks, it makes it much easier to achieve.  You can look for clear gaps in your routine and add a couple of hours for cleaning every fortnight, or you can add one session of bouldering a month and see how that fits into your routine. If all goes well, you can ramp it up to weekly cleaning and fortnightly bouldering. As you get more comfortable with your routine, you can add as many extracurricular activities or chores as you need to stay on top of your life. 

Make your routine enjoyable

Routines sound boring when we talk about them, but they’re really not! They’re meant to be an outline of your life and your life should be enjoyable. So when it comes to routines, making your schedule enjoyable often helps with continuing motivation. This might include breaking up the errands and commitments you’re not so keen on with fun and exercise so that your week is well-rounded.

Try to consider all the wonderful ways you bring enjoyment into the chores part of your routine, too. Maybe you could dance around to a playlist you enjoy while you do your task of cleaning the kitchen or taking your job to a new location. Or perhaps part of the routine is to assign a room or task each day so the task feels less overwhelming and monotonous. Whichever ways you can bring more diversity and enjoyment and boost your mood while doing the routine can help you stick to it and get everything done without pushing yourself too hard.

Weigh up your priorities regularly and make adjustments

Life is strange sometimes, and the things we enjoyed once, lose their thrill. You might make major strides in following your routine to one day realise it’s not serving you like it used to. It’s important to stay mindful of whether the things that fill up your week are working for you or not, and not to force anything that isn’t working.

For example, when the weather starts to warm up, going to a yoga class might feel more of a chore than it used to, and maybe that’s your system’s way of telling you it’s time to switch to a new activity like swimming. Or maybe your finances have changed and you can afford to get a cleaner, in which case you could swap your cleaning time for rest and restore some more balance.

None of us can do it all, and it’s easy to compare ourselves to what others are achieving. Remember that we’re all unique and have our own capacities. The important part of a routine is to help you live to your own potential, and checking in to see if you’re getting what you want out of your week regularly is the best way to make a routine work well for you.

Routines enhance productivity because they help us prepare and organise our weeks while bringing balance that mentally stimulates and charges us. They’re meant to be enjoyable but push us to achieve more from ourselves.

Using a method of tracking your commitments and activities can help keep you accountable, and starting small is the best way to build into a robust and well-rounded weekly routine.