My morning routine has been a little “spongy” as of late. Too loose, too fluid, not super productive. I sleep a little too long, I surf a bit too much, and I don’t get to my list of todos until a different time each morning, depending on what I get up to. I’m not a great starter.
I took some time during my weekly review recently to add these to my calendar, hoping to get my butt in gear earlier and be more productive:
Take blood pressure pill (6:10am)
take meat out of freezer for dinner (6:30am)
make coffee (6:30am)
review readwise and journal (6:40 - 7 or so)
I start work at 7am, work from home.
I put the above in my calendar, but taking my blood pressure pill takes 2 seconds. Seems odd to have it there. Until yesterday, I didn’t even track that anywhere as I always remember to do it first thing. Well, 97% of the time. For that 3% I figured it’s better to track than say “did I take my pill today? Can’t remember
I read online somewhere if it’s tied to a time then it’s more a calendar entry, but these items kinda feel like items that should be checked off a list.
As I’m typing this, I feel like maybe calendar to block the time and task manager to check it off - so both.
I also try to slot in a meditation mid morning so it would also be in the mix.
Oh, and the Streaks app tracks meditation. See where this can get overly complex?
I like your idea to have items in both your calendar and your task manager. Or, you could stick to just your task manager if it includes an option for task alarms or timed reminders. (Things and Reminders do.)
And for yet another option, the iOS Health app has a feature to remind you to take medication. (I have not tried it myself.)
All this may seem like overkill to some, but sometimes we need that extra kick in the butt to form or strengthen a habit!
I use the Health app to remind me to take my BP meds in the morning and my cholesterol pill at night. Google Tasks is integrated into Gmail, Calendar, Sheets, Docs, Drive, etc. so I use it for just about everything. But I prefer Apple Reminders for location based reminders and Due for those occasional “can’t forget” items. Widgets on the Home Screen of my iPhone and iPad display all three “reminder” apps and my calendar displays both tasks and events. And all use the Apple Watch to alert me.
Traditionally in Unix you use programs that do one thing well. Instead of trying to use one app for everything, I like using the “best” app for my situation.
Using Tasks for some things and Calendar for others now makes you face a different problem: where do you check what you need to act on at one particular moment? I tend to follow my calendar instead of my tasks, but for your use case I created a “Morning Routine” recurring item in my calendar linked to an Apple Note (that I can conveniently summon with a shortcut) where I would put the routine items to just remember to execute them. Some of them I don’t need to do them daily so they are with a question mark. I believe this to clear a lot of cruft.
NotePlan has an elegant time-blocking feature that lets you drag a task to the calendar view inside NotePlan. It shows up there, and you can get alerts, but it doesn’t show up on your regular calendar, which remains for appointments. (You can also set up the time blocks in the text of the task.)
I’ve found it really useful for exactly these in-between sorts of scheduled tasks.
If you want a recurring scheduled task – always at the same time – you can build the time-blocked task into a template, so it’s always there.
That said, if the most important thing is doing the thing at the time, or else, Due is probably better. And if you have scheduled at more complex recurring intervals there may better tools as well
I would just have a time block for 6 am - 7 am. Then I’d have an index card or sheet of paper with all the items I need to do during that time block. I can mount the sheet on foam board and hang it on the wall to remind me of what I need to do.
I don’t get a dopamine hit having to remind myself to check off something that becomes a habit.
There are tasks I don’t need to check off:
brush teeth
floss teeth
make breakfast
make coffee
take my daily meds
make the bed
read one page from the Daily Stoic and the Daily Laws book
Cursory scan of emails that arrived last night
Check today’s schedule in Fantastical
Visit the OmniFocus Review perspective
enter a short Day One journal entry for today
These have become habits and no longer need a task manager for me. Just a simple time block called Morning Startup Routine.
For a lot of tasks that needs nagging, I’ll use the Due app. It nags me every Wednesday night at 9 pm to take the trash to the curbside for the Thursday trash pickup. It nags me every 15 minutes until I mark it as complete. As far as I know, I don’t have a log of when it’s done. I just know that it’s done until next Wednesday night.
My Daily Shutdown routine is also on a piece of foam board as well. I run through that list near the end of the day.
If it is something in trying for track, I’ll put it into my task manager or the Streak app. But the morning startup and daily shutdown are habits and no longer in my task manager.
I ended up adding the items with timed reminders in Todoist. I have an Apple Watch so the “tap tap” haptic (no sound) with the little reminder that pops up works perfectly. I suppose a calendar entry would function the same way, but it seems “lighter” to just have a Todoist reminder. It’s been working the past couple of mornings. I mean, Reminders would also work here but since I’m already a Todoist man – I figured why not?
This is so true, but watch beeps can help you acquire the habit.
Also, and it has already been discussed here, the key is chaining habits, I would add to that that if your habit chain is too long, it becomes fragile as we tend to add too many things that are slightly more and more complicated to act on. So it’s better to begin with 2-3 chained habits and once they are consolidated (for me it takes a couple of weeks) keep adding more step by step.
I’ve also switched to tracking medication in Apple Health. It does an alert at times of your choosing, and it does a follow-up alert if you don’t confirm you’ve done it after a certain amount of time. For example I have a daily alert for my meds, and another alert that goes off 30 mins later if I’ve not logged it.
I had mostly found the idea of logging meds in Apple Health a bit of a waste of my time (my needs are not complex - obviously I could see its value generally!). However, after missing a couple of doses recently due to forgetfulness, and with the arrival of Apple Health on iPad, it made sense to adopt this and let Apple Health take over the burden of remembering.
I was going to recommend a task manager for the other items as they feel a bit “light” for a calendar, but I see you’ve adopted Todoist. Apple Reminders could also do it as you can set 2 alerts for tasks and make them repeating (no postpone button still though - Todoist do this bit well!).
I do have a couple of recurring tasks in my calendar, but they’re generally things that take 10 mins or longer so actually so require a bit of time to be blocked out.
The method of creating habits works well, for say, taking medications once a day and the time is unimportant. However, if medications need to be taken multiple times a day at specific times, a habit often falls short. As others have mentioned, Apple Health is outstanding in that scenario.
In addition to finding the right technology, the key to solving your issue may lie in creating ingrained habits. If you haven’t read Atomic Habits by James Clear, it comes highly recommended for understanding the impact of habit formation.
For example, after a taxing day at work, the idea of going for a run is far from appealing; I’d much rather unwind in my recliner. While I do have a slot for exercise on my calendar at 4pm, that alone isn’t enough motivation. The trick is to eliminate any barriers that could derail my running routine between the time I get out of my car and actually leave the house for the run. As soon as I arrive home, I follow a strict sequence: I greet my wife and dog (actually, the dog usually gets to me first ) and then head straight to change into my running gear without any detours or pauses. Breaking this flow means I won’t go for a run. So, it’s crucial that I maintain this habit of immediately changing into my running clothes as soon as I get home.
You may want to consider something similar for your morning routine. Again, I highly recommend Atomic Habits.
Having watched two generations around me age and become elderly, and getting older all the time myself (luckily!), I have thoughts on this principle:
Habits are great. But be sure to also develop habits that will let you do what you need to do without having to remember too much about what you’ve learned, what you’ve done, what you need to do.
Most of the older people I’ve had the privilege to know have developed memory problems to one degree or another (minimal to severe), usually around working or short-term memory. Those who had already come up with ways to keep track of these things seem to do much better. The systems don’t have to be fixed; just being used to having a system seems to be helpful. The people I’ve known who always had excellent memories, and could always simply remember what they needed to do, when and how, had much more trouble over time than those who had a habit of keeping notes and lists, etc.
This is all anecdotal, and it may be that we’ll all be fortunate enough to stay sharp until the day we die. Wonderful! But IMO, it’s like a verifiable version of Pascal’s wager: Better to be ready and not need it than to need it and not be ready.
I do not have a good memory, therefore, I find it easier to remember things when I keep them simple. For example, my one rule for exercising is to “go straight to my closet and change into running clothes as soon as I get home.” Other, more complex, activities may require remembering more steps, which is why I mentioned the importance of ‘finding the right technology.’ My point is that technology isn’t always the answer to our struggle to be productive. Developing good habits and self-discipline often is.
I agree. I was always a manager, of people for the first 20 years, and of technology the last 30. It was easy to forget the routine items when your day was frequently a long series of people asking “You gotta minute?”. So before there were watch beeps to remind me to do things there were post it notes stuck to my bathroom mirror, my car door, my desk phone, my office door, etc.
I don’t have those interruptions now that I’m retired, but I also don’t have much of a routine. My day starts at 6:00am, or 4:00am, or 5:15am, basically whatever time I wake up.
But I have a phone and watch to remind me of things, like today is Friday .
I love the watch taps! At my job, my co-workers and I rotate tasks every hour. So I have a script to copy my task schedule for the day from our intranet spreadsheet and create timed Reminders three minutes before the hour. I used to space out in the back room while my co-worker was waiting for me at the front desk (public library) but now those little taps keep me in the right place at the right time.
I can see how this would work very well for growing habits, too.
) and then head straight to change into my running gear without any detours or pauses. Breaking this flow means I won’t go for a run. So, it’s crucial that I maintain this habit of immediately changing into my running clothes as soon as I get home.
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