How to Show Up for Your Routines When You’re Exhausted AF

Personal DevelopmentProductivity

Sep 17

Written By Jessica Massey

Keep reading this post to learn:

⋒ Why it feels so much harder to stick to routines when we are exhausted

⋒ Why you should create a “thriving self-standard routine” and a “surviving self-standard routine”

⋒ How to create these routines and know when it’s time to make a change to them

We are inching closer to the holidays which for a lot of us means fuller calendars. A fuller calendar tends to mean feeling more exhausted. Even if you’re exhausted because your calendar is full of fun things!

When we’re exhausted, we tend to neglect the routines we’ve put in place that help us steward our time and energy well. Routines that normally support us and make us feel like our healthiest selves loom over us and drag us into a state of dread and/or guilt. We wind up throwing them all out the window and then feeling guilty for not doing them and/or overwhelmed because the areas of life that said routines supported now feel chaotic and unintentional.

Let me tell ya – that is so NOT the vibe when it comes to Hustling Sanely okay!

You know what I’m gonna say but I’m gonna say it anyway: our schedules and routines are tools, not chains! They are meant to make your life easier, not stress you out.

If you find yourself in the place where your routines are feeling stressful or you’re dreading doing them because you just don’t have the energy to, there’s not something wrong with you – it just means you need to update your routines a bit so they meet you where you’re at right now.

Something we talked about inside the BFF membership this quarter has changed the game for me and for my fellow BFFs: instead of having one set of routines that we expect ourselves to show up for all the time, we created 2 sets of routines. We call one our THRIVING SELF-STANDARD ROUTINE (this is how you show up when life is flowing well) and we call the other our SURVIVING SELF-STANDARD ROUTINE (this is how you show up when life feels hard).

Imagine creating a “day/week in your life” for your best days and a “day/week in your life” for your hardest days. Another way to look at each type of day is your thriving self-standard as your ceiling or ideal day in this season and your surviving self-standard as your floor or revised day in this season.

So often we only pay attention to only the thriving self-standard – how we want to show up when things are flowing well – and we try to show up like that when life feels hard and then we feel guilty or lazy for not…which doesn’t make sense!

How can you expect yourself to show up the same on the days when you get 8 hours of sleep versus the days you got 4 because your baby kept waking up? How can you expect yourself to show up the same as you normally do during a time of crisis? It’s not feasible or healthy to have that expectation on yourself.

You need to have a baseline standard… aka how you’re gonna show up when you’re in survival mode – so that you’re still taking care of yourself but in a way that is sustainable for a hard day or hard season.

In order to live a peacefully productive life and have harmony between your work, well-being, and relationships, you have to set sustainable standards for yourself.

Part of my Quarterly Check-In Meeting, which is part of The Hustle Sanely Planning System (you can learn more about this in the Hustle Sanely Lifestyle Course), includes tweaking my Weekly Routine Outline so that it makes sense for what season I’m in.

Doing this helps me make sure I’m not just doing routines for the sake of doing routines but that I’m being intentional with how I spend my time and that how I’m showing up for my life reflects my vision.

I know the Hustle Sanely community loves a concrete example so I’m gonna share my current daily surviving self and thriving self routines with you to get your wheels turning.

THRIVING SELF IDEAL DAY ROUTINE:

– 6 AM: Wake up, ice roll, make my collagen coffee, journal, read my Bible, read 10 pages of personal development

– HS5 tidy for 15 minutes

– Go get coffee and go on a walk with the fam

– Do my HS5 move for 30 minutes + 10 minutes of grounding

– Breakfast + vitamins

– Get ready for work (hello YouTube coffee shower, lol)

– Work from 10-4, taking a lunch break with my fiction book for at least 20-30 minutes and walking on my walking pad to help me hit 10,000 steps for the day

– Spend 30 minutes of phone-free time with Evvy

– Go to the park or on another walk as a family

– Have dinner as a family (no phones)

– Evening skincare, journaling, drink magnesium, read fiction, put my phone on the charger by 8:45, spend time with Adam

– In bed by 10:30 PM

In a normal season of life, my goal is to follow this daily routine at least 4-5 days a week

SURVIVING SELF-REVISED DAILY ROUTINE:

– 6:30 AM: Wake up, ice roll, make my collagen coffee, journal

– HS5 tidy for 15 minutes

– Go get coffee and go on a walk with the fam

– Do my HS5 move for 30 minutes (low intensity)

– Breakfast + vitamins

– Get ready for work (hello YouTube coffee shower, lol)

– Work from 10-4, taking a lunch break with my fiction book for at least 20-30 minutes and walking on my walking pad to help me hit 10,000 steps for the day, allowing myself to move tasks around on my calendar to suit my mental/emotional state

– Spend 30 minutes of phone-free time with Evvy

– Have dinner as a family (no phones)

– Evening skincare, journaling, drink magnesium, spend time with Adam

– In bed by 10:00 PM

Remember to ask yourself, “What feels doable on my hardest days?” and use that to guide the creation of your surviving self routines. It’s going to look different for you in different seasons of life and that’s normal! I don’t expect myself to show up the same as I did before I became a mom because that shifted my priorities and changed my life vision, you know?

You can also have different versions of each day – so maybe you have thriving/ideal day routines mapped out for work days and non-work days.

If you find yourself in a prolonged difficult season, consider creating a thriving/ideal week routine and a surviving/revised week routine, too, so that you’re aware what weekly habits are non-negotiable versus which ones you can shift around during tougher weeks without feeling guilty.

That’s really what this comes down to - you’re mapping out habits in a way that feels sustainable for you no matter what kind of day or week you’re having so that you are still prioritizing your well-being/relationships even if you’re in an exhausting season of life.

And that is how to show up for your routines when you’re exhausted AF! This concept has been such a game-changer for me. I hope that you had a lightbulb moment or 2 as you read this blog post (or listened to this episode of the podcast!) and that you feel encouraged to draft up not just a thriving self daily routine but a surviving self daily routine, too!

HAVE YOU HEARD?