Building a Routine • Week 3
Two weeks down – we managed to keep up with our exercise and made time for a family meal just in time. Reminds me of turning in online classwork at 11:59 PM. (That happened more times than I care to admit.)
We opted for tried and true spaghetti instead of hand-making ravioli. Emilia formed the meatballs with me and Auni handled the sauce. We used Joshua Weissman’s recipe which is darn good.
This week was a particularly chaotic and challenging week as far as sticking to a routine goes.
At Penny University, the build out is going mostly well – tile started one of the bathrooms but had to be paused because we’re likely going to have to install a grease interceptor, which kind of sounds like a cool ship from Star Wars but really just catches nasty food juice. The installation is going to involve jack hammers which could vibrate tile off the wall. We were not anticipating jack hammers.
Side note: Penny U is about to roll out their fall menu which includes my favorite: the butterscotch latte. Hit up their Instagram for the deets.
At Melodiq we had a video shoot at an almond orchard and in case you hadn’t heard, farmers get up early. Really early. The next day we flew a drone around inside a baby food factory. A surprising amount of the same pouches our kids used to eat were made in Fresno. It’s good to be busy but being out of the office often puts me behind on design work. Yes, I realize this is due to my own subpar planning. Working on it!
I’m realizing the biggest obstacle to building our routine isn’t lack of motivation – it’s our ability to stick to the plan. Some situations merit flexibility but a good portion of the time we just didn’t say “no” when we should have. Could be a last-minutes client request for a meeting outside of business hours or allowing a business phone call to drag on for 30 minutes too long.
There are two ways we’ll try to mitigate these boundary-pushing scenarios.
Be ok with saying “no” to things that add stress and hurt productivity.
Give space for unforeseen disruptions. Your day shouldn’t be so planned out that a 15 or 30 minute delay throws the whole thing off.
This week we’re going to try and dial in some time-frames for our goals in hopes of turning it into an actual routine.
M, W, F, Sa, Su are going to be our exercise days. We’ve got a pickleball set to christen and a climbing gym membership to use, as well as the lovely Virginia corridor a block away.
Thursday night is family meal night. Send me your best staple meal recipes. Bonus points if we can use our air fryer. Our camper stove turns this place into a sauna.
This week we’re adding 15 minutes of daily reading to the routine. The aim is to do it in the evening before bed. I’m currently reading Outlive by Peter Attia. Emilia is reading some mermaid book (shocker) and Ramona is “reading” Peppa Pig. Auni is starting the classic How to Win Friends and Influence People which I highly recommend.
Correction: I put the wrong time when referencing my college procrastination habit. Turning in an assignment after lunch (12:59 PM) not so bad. I meant 11:59 PM (not great).