Self-Compassion: An Alternative Motivation for Developing an Evening Routine
“A successful day starts the night before! Establish an evening routine to have a better tomorrow!”
If you’ve been around the world of self-development/self-help for any length of time I’m almost certain you’ve stumbled across this piece of advice in some form.
Tips like these certainly have their place. It’s true that if you approach life with intentionality you’ll get further than if you simply drift. Unless you’re a prodigy, in which case, you can probably ignore my last statement.
For the rest of us “average people,” we need to attack the world with intention. Intention forces us to use our limited resources (time, attention, hot chocolate) to the maximum effect. Routines are a way to make our intentions actionable.
Action is good, but action with a reason behind it is better. If we’re simply doing all the top productivity hacks with no end goal in mind, what purpose are our actions serving? Thus, an important question that is often neglected when discussing an evening routine is deciding why you want to start one.
What “They” Say
Usually, when we’re reading articles about establishing routines they are assuming we want to maximize productivity. Their assumption usually causes them to recommend certain cliche actions.
Stop me if the following list looks familiar:
- Writing Routine
- Listen to an educational podcast
- Read a book/article in your field
- Journaling
- Passion projects
- Meditation
- Exercise
Facetiousness aside, their assumption that we want to improve our life through productivity is fair. Why are reading a “self-development” article otherwise? Unless you’re a masochist to the highest degree, I highly doubt you’d willingly read these articles without the intention to act.
The problem with these articles is that they assume improving our life has to take place in regards to our work-related output. It is much less common to see improvement framed in terms of your self-esteem, overall well-being, or perceptions about your life.
While work is an important part of life for all of us, and vital for others, it’s not the sole determinate of someone’s life. This leads me to believe their assumption on what defines an improved, productive life is incomplete.
An Incomplete Assumption?
The writers and readers of self-development articles tend to be more “Type-A.” Consequently, their definition of an improved, productive life is more limited in scope.
An underlying subtext of all their recommendations is an obsession with achievement. While writers in the self-improvement will often challenge us to define achievement in our own terms, the focus is still undoubtedly on a measurable external outcome.
Achievement is not bad, nor is it something that should be shunned. If I was more driven to accomplish things then perhaps I’d be able to provide a better life for my close friends, family, and myself.
Despite the allure of career success, I believe there are other reasons we would want to curate an evening routine. As all the self-help articles point to, an evening routine gives us a common touch point and instills more order in our life.
If you’re trying to recover/manage mental illness like depression and anxiety then having order and purpose can be immensely helpful. Routines also lead to an intentional simplicity. This helps any human, regardless of if we’re battling a mental illness.
Even if we’re not battling mental illness, the peace of mind a routine can bring is amazing. Establishing these routines mean the endpoints of our day are set. Assuming we stick to the routine, we more or less know what to expect.
Finding My Rhythm
Establishing an effective, consistent evening routine is hard.
It became clear that they were hard to maintain because I didn’t have a compelling reason behind their formation. Like many people, I dream of having money to burn, six-pack abs, and living life on my own terms.
While these ideas are tantalizing, the road to achieving these dreams is long and the short-term rewards minimal. Thus, finding the desire to keep going after a few days was difficult. After a month I usually reverted to my old ways.
Aside from the lack of motivation, I also tried to take on too much at once. I went from being super lazy to working out, meditating, and journaling all in the span of an hour during the morning.
Unsurprisingly, I was unable and unwilling to keep up with all these habits I had yet to establish. My failure to maintain the habits required for the morning routine meant the routine eventually withered away into the ether.
Recently, I’ve wanted to restart an evening and eventually morning routine. To not taste defeat yet again, I have to do something different.
Upon examining my past attempts and subsequent failures, I found a new motivation for creating an evening routine. Along with my new motivation, is a new process for adding to the routine, which includes the adoption of a new rule.
My New Reason
This year I want to focus on my health. Historically, I’ve struggled with my health physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. Despite my apparent criticism of evening routines, I believe the right evening routine can get our mornings rolling smoother.
My focus on my health demands that I fix my sleep. Obtaining quality sleep has numerous mental, emotional, and physical benefits. Optimizing my evening for quality sleep works because it’s simple, obtainable, and meaningful.
I can clearly define quality sleep, so I can create actions which enable that goal. Improving my health is sufficiently motivating because once I improve my health, I’ll be able to more easily accomplish my other, more audacious goals.
My New Process
When adding a new component to my evening routine I now have to ask two critical questions.
- Will this help me obtain better quality sleep?
- Is this adding unnecessary complexity?
These two questions make it clear what my priorities are. I want to create a simplistic evening routine that helps maximize the quality sleep I obtain.
Simplicity is something to strive for in systems. The more complex a system is, the more points of failure it contains. As the complexity of the system increases, you have two choices. You can either add additional redundancies in the event a component fails (costly,) or you can consolidate the components so there are fewer overall points of failure.
For me, the simpler the system the better. I’ll eventually be able to add more components, assuming they pass my two questions, but for now, I want to keep my routine simple stupid.
My New Rule
The establishment of an evening routine is the same as establishing a new habit. It will take a long time to form and is easy to break in the beginning. Trial and error have taught me I will invariably fail and err when first trying to form a habit.
I could choose to get mad at this fact, call myself a loser, and then proceed to throw in the towel. Throwing in the towel would be more satisfying, at least in the short-term, but it’s not helpful.
Instead, I elected to build in a rule that allows me to fail but encourages me to keep moving forward. The rule is one that is often cited in habit formation which is don’t miss two in a row.
Should I miss a night of the evening routine or fall asleep later than I intend it’s okay. I need to examine what went wrong so I don’t repeat my mistake, but I didn’t instantly fail. I only fail if I don’t get back under the covers the next night.
My new rule is a compassionate measure of success. It allows momentary blips without ruining my process entirely. I feel much more motivated to maintain any habit I build with this rule in mind.
Constant Iteration
As our needs grow and change so too should our routine. I see a ton of articles, videos, etc. talk about how to create a morning/evening routine. Very few articles address how to evaluate if our routine is still hitting the mark, or how to change it should we deem it necessary.
I’ve decided to enlist the help of the scientific method.
Whenever we deem our routine inadequate, we should rotate out the habits that form the routine one at a time. This is so we can observe the changes made as a result.
After you understand the changes, we should slowly rotate in one new habit. The reason for this is two-fold. Firstly, habit stacking can be an effective way to chain together related habits. Essentially we piggy-back a new habit off an already established one.
Using habit stacking increases the odds of successfully doing the new habit and allows us to speed up the rate of habit formation.
The second reason is that our goal is long-term sustainable change and routines. If we simply throw out the kitchen sink and start all over again we’ll run into the same level of resistance as when we established the first routine.
We’re trying to make our lives easier, not harder. Although slowly rotating habits in and out is slower, it’s incrementally better. In the long-run, the constant, small improvements will add up. Further, I believe the 1% doctrine, getting 1% better every day is much better than the 0% doctrine, which is when you give up on your routine. Shockingly, 1 > 0.
Wrapping Up
An evening routine is a powerful tool for living a more intentional life. It is commonly framed as an efficiency hack in self-improvement circles. While this can be true, there are other, equally valid reasons for establishing evening routines.
A commonly neglected reason is self-compassion. Maybe you’re not a hyper-driven person or you’re content with where you are professionally and personally. An evening routine can still help you ensure that we’re living our life on our terms, as much as possible at the moment.
Although world domination isn’t on our docket, a more peaceful and meaningful evening is still invaluable.
Our health and wellbeing shouldn’t be considered secondary to our work achievements. They are goals which are equally valid and as important, if not more, than our accomplishments. Without our health, we cannot dare think about building a legacy and forging new paths.
When we intentionally design an evening routine around our health, we benefit ourselves and those we are responsible to.
