Creating a Balanced Daily Flow for Daily Clarity

Lately I’ve been sitting with the kind of creative energy that’s calling me to manage my time better.

It’s like, I want to get the rest I need, while making sure I have the time to work in a way that feels impactful. I also need time for more exercise. Over summer, the weather here was so hot that my exercise routine kind of just fell off. But now that the weather is nice again, it’s a reminder that I need to make time for good exercise. And honestly, I could have figured out ways to exercise at home indoors while the weather wasn’t so nice, but I was so used to exercising outdoors that when the not so nice weather hit, I just dropped the habit. But overall, I’m interested in using my time better.

Since I’m entrepreneurial, and I work for myself, I really want to be my own ideal boss. I want to make sure that I do the work and be responsible, but in a way that respects my needs and limits.

I’ve been discovering that when I create gentle boundaries around my time, I actually have a bit more time than I realize. So this is the schedule that I’ve been experimenting with daily:

• 3 hours for creative work
• 2 hours for reading and research
• 30 minutes to one hour for exercise/movement
• 30 minutes to one hour for house cleaning and home projects
• 30 minutes to one hour for social media
• one hour for outdoor time

This schedule was inspired by this Pin on Pinterest. Something about it just felt like a good fit for me the moment I saw it. It’s not for everyone, obviously, but it spoke to me.

So I’ve been giving it a try, and honestly I like how all of this fits into my day overall. It’s not always perfect, especially when I have other commitments during the day, but I do like how it gives me a framework for seeing how I can give all the things that are important to me a little bit of time.

When I do this schedule, I’m not strict with myself at all:

• I allow myself to multi-task (doing creative work while sitting outside, for example).
• I use a time tracker app (specifically Simple Time Tracker to track each of the blocks.
• I don’t pause the timer for breaks (bathroom, water, snacks, tea, using my massage gun, etc…).

I allow the short breaks I take to be a part of the time and doing so keeps my day light and relaxed even with these time boundaries. I also include the time it takes for me to get set up and prepared. However, I do stop the timer for meal times. I also want to note that it’s totally unnecessary to jump from one thing to the next with this schedule. Like I don’t feel pressure to clean all the things today, because I know that I’ll be doing more cleaning tomorrow.

So as a result, this isn’t really a schedule in the typical sense. It’s more like the shore that surrounds a lake or the banks of a river. It gently outlines and limits how much time to spend without dictating when the time is spent.

For example, I don’t approach these time blocks in the same order every day. Sometimes when I first get up, I want to read, so I do that. But other times, I want to jump straight into the creative work, so I do that instead. I try to prioritize the biggest time block, because then everything else can flow around that, but overall, I just go with how I feel.

Also not everything has to be done uninterrupted. For example, there is no way I can exercise for a full hour straight. However, I can do thirty minutes, and then do a little bit of social media time or light chores, and then do another thirty minutes later. That’s why I use a time tracker app for this because it allows me to see how much time I’m using for each block without forcing myself to stick to a strict schedule.

So my overall goal here is to stay on task, set boundaries around my time so that I use my time well, but yet, keep things relaxed and pressure free.

From doing this schedule—or maybe I should call it a time flow—I could better see how much of my time was going towards reading and research. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I was reading and researching so much that I didn’t have much time left for chores, exercise, or even my own creative work—and that was a problem. So I really appreciate having a system to keep this tendency of mine in check.

To be clear, this schedule is still very much experimental. I’ve only been trying this for almost a week, but I feel it’s worth sharing because I can already see the difference in how my day is balanced, how I physically feel, and in how my house looks. I’ve recently added a new time block called “Deep Self-care.” This is not meant to be done daily, but for days when I’m recovering from working out.

So far with this approach I feel rewarded when I take five minutes to clean up a corner of the house or do a little exercise/movement, because that is time I can subtract from my time goal for the day, even if I don’t reach it. I feel more motivated to do the things I don’t naturally feel drawn to doing because I feel like each action I take in those areas are adding up to something.

Like I’ve already mentioned, this kind of “time flow” definitely isn’t for everyone. Not being able to work a normal job due to my chronic pain gives me the freedom to design how my day works at this level. But if you’re wishing to have more time for creative work, exercise, time outside, or taking care of your home, maybe this template could give you a starting point that you could tweak to fit your own circumstances.

Maybe instead of having 3 hours of creative time, could you do one hour or less? Or maybe experimenting with cutting the time of all the blocks in half, or even just choosing to prioritize the blocks you feel like you need the most. You could even experiment with not even using the time blocks for every day, but just select days. There’s a lot of possibilities to play with here. And if you feel like diving more deeply into designing your own daily flow, more tips can be found in my book Thoughtful Planning:How to Use Questions for Self-reflection to Design Your Day.