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Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of IHeart Radio.

Good morning.

This is Laura.

Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.

Today's tip is to ask yourself whether your routines are routine.

If they are not, figure out why not, and adjust as needed, or at least update your perception of your life.

I often hear from listeners about their struggles with time management.

Recently, one person said she wanted her routines to actually be routine.

I get that.

So many people have visions of their routines, but a little time tracking reveals that the routine is the exception rather than the default.

Sometimes people construct whole narratives about their lives, based on routines that are not actually routine.

I've written a lot about morning routines over the years, and I eventually started asking people

how often their beautiful routines actually happened. Sometimes it was every day, but often it wasn't,

even if the person would have told you the routine was a daily thing. This can go in the other direction, too, by the way.

A person can construct a wo-is-mee narrative of always spending their Saturdays on chores,

and then I get a time log with a Saturday spent with friends,

and the person tells me, this never happens, except it did.

I'm sure you have some of these routines that are not actually routine in your life.

You theoretically run every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday before work, but the last time this

happened was a couple of weeks ago.

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