I’m usually pretty driven when it comes to completing my daily routines. Even when my schedule is tight, I still manage more often than not to get everything done. But I occasionally have days in which I just feel off and have a much harder time finding the will to do anything on my list. On those days, I remind myself that even a small amount of work toward my goals is better than nothing.
For example, if I’m not excited about exercising on one of my gym days, I’ll go anyway and warm up. That way I’ll stay in the habit of going to the gym three times a week, which will allow me to make regular progress and prevent me from missing it for weeks or months at a time. Additionally, once I’ve finished warming up, I’ll typically feel better and be in the proper mindset to finish my normal workout. Similarly, if I don’t feel up to doing my usual amount of chinups, I’ll do one. I’ll stretch for a minute or two if anything more than that seems out of reach. And so on for everything else in my usual routine.
Most of what I do on a daily basis comes down to habit. If I go a day without working on one of my usual tasks, then it’s extremely easy for me to fall out of the habit of doing it and end up avoiding it for extended periods of time; getting back into it then becomes extremely difficult. Spending just a little bit of time every day keeps me on track with my routines and allows me to benefit from them. This also prevents me from being hard on myself since it lets me keep moving in the right direction while I take a bit of a break. I learned this life hack from How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big and, since I’ve adopted it, it’s made it much easier for me to navigate life. If you decide to try it out, I hope it works as well for you as it’s worked for me.