How to Be Better Every Day by Tweaking Your Routine

Do you think about how to be better every day?

Once you establish a daily routine, it’s easy to stick to the mindset that it’s the only way to get through your day. You might get up, drink your cup of coffee and get going, but how much of your routine makes you successful?

There are always ways to grow and improve on what you do every day. The first step to making change happen is to take a second look at your routine and make positive changes where they’re needed the most.

Think about your own daily life and read about how to be better every day by tweaking your routine. The productivity, energy or whatever you want more of in your life is within reach. Consider making these changes to see how they help you achieve your goals.

1. Start With Something Small

Imagine a time in your life when you’ve tried to make a big change all at once. You might have cut out sugar or carbs from your diet to feel healthier or lose weight. Anyone who’s tried something like that knows how after a few days, the temptation to go back to old habits is overwhelming.

It’s comforting to stick with a routine you know, so don’t do everything all at once. Start with something small, like waking up a minute earlier every day for a week until you’re comfortable waking up earlier. It might not feel like progress at first, but over time the efforts will naturally build into a routine.

2. Recognize Your Habits

You might want to get better but not know where to start. If that’s the case, reflect on your habits and recognize them as helpful or not helpful. Eating a healthy breakfast every morning is helpful, but smoking cigarettes is bad in the long run.

These things might not feel like habits, which is why pausing to think about them will help rethink your routine. Write down a list of your habits and think about their long-term impact to figure out what needs to change.

3. List Your SMART Goals

After you know which habits you want to replace and how you’ll tweak your routine, it’s time to think about how they’ll help you achieve your life goals. Make your goals more straightforward by creating actionable SMART goals that follow the acronym:

• S: Specific or Significant
• M: Measurable or Meaningful
• A: Action-Oriented or Attainable
• R: Relevant or Rewarding
• T: Trackable or Time-Bound

Goals that you can measure and track will help you map out the changes in your routine and encourage you to continue with those changes.

4. Record Your Progress

No one will be on this personal journey except you, so you won’t have a partner who understands the significance of the routine tweaks you make. Be your own cheerleader and record your daily progress so you can look back and see how much has changed. Tiny tweaks don’t feel like much when they happen, but when you’ve stuck with them for weeks or months, you can look back on how your routine has improved.

5. Maintain Your Focus

Whether you just started with your new routine or you’ve spent months keeping up with your tweaks, it can be exhausting to resist the urge to fall back into old habits. Think about what encourages you and maintain your daily focus so your efforts don’t go to waste. Create a vision board or reward yourself weekly for not breaking with the changes you’ve committed yourself to make.

Take Your Time

No matter what tweaks you want to make to your routine, take your time with them. Gradual progress over time is more likely to become your new way of life, rather than jumping into something entirely new. Decide on your goals to narrow down which routine changes are right for you to get started on your path to self-improvement.