Ep. 64 Rhythms and Routines as a WFHM [Jumpstart Your Year: Day 4]

Happy New Year!

Welcome to the 2024 Jumpstart Your Year series, where we're coming to you every day this January with mini episodes to help you get reflecting on what's working and what's not in your parenting and productivity journey.

Our goal with the series is to create momentum and spark creativity so you can go into the new year with clarity and intention.

On Day 4, Christina reflects on the question:

What rhythms or routines are supporting you right now?
Read more: https://christinaslaback.com/2024/01/04/rhythms-over-routines-finding-flexibility-and-flow-day-4/

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Transcript

Christina: To jumpstart your year, we're coming to you every day this month with mini episodes to get you reflecting on what's working and what's not in your parenting and productivity journey. Our goal with this series is to create momentum and spark creativity so you can go into the new year with clarity and intention.

Hey, I'm Christina, life and business coach homeschooling mom and work from home entrepreneur. And today we are going to talk about rhythms versus routines. So, when we're planning and getting together for our year, a lot of times what you'll hear us talk about is routines. A lot of times this is referenced to morning routines or evening routines, cleaning routines, things like that.

I have a complicated relationship with routines. I really actually despise routines. But what I do like and what I have been incorporating since primarily since becoming a mom is rhythms into our household and just to give you some background. So a routine is something that you do at a certain time every day or at a certain time.

every week and it's pretty rigid in what it is. So at 7 30 a. m. I get up and I make breakfast. rhYthm on the other hand is something that you do kind of concurrently. So it's not just at time. It's not at Set time of day or even the week, but you'll do it just kind of one after another. And it's just setting you up for expectations.

And in terms of parenting, it's really good for kids. Because they have those expectations, but it doesn't lock you into a rigid routine. So they'll kind of know in the morning, typically we'll get food and we'll get going and then we'll. do this. And on Thursdays, we have this activity going on. But it allows for more flexibility in terms of having some structure into your days or your weeks, but allowing you that time for spontaneity.

And with that, when you're setting up, so when I look at what we do in the morning, whether it's for me personally or for the kids I'll look at our week and determine what days we want to be out and doing something. I'll usually try to kind of put similar activities around those. If we're already out and about we might do errands and then just the library or things like that for our schooling.

And in terms of for myself personally, I'll also try to group like things together, but I have kind of a system of how often I do them and it's not strictly at certain times or anything, but it'll be that's in the morning. I'll get up. between some certain time. And then what I'll do is right away, I'll usually try to get my morning pages done or I'll try to go outside for a walk.

And then I get some of my personal stuff done, whatever that looks like at the time, whatever kind of my setup is at the time. And then The kids can kind of get up and get themselves going, but we have a little bit of leniency in that. And then we'll get started on our homeschooling and kind of get our day started after that.

But it's not at set specific times and it's not specific things that need to go in a set order. It's just allowing the opportunity to have so they know they have a little bit of time to kind of get themselves situated, whether they want to get some of their own personal like tasks and chores that they have to do done right away, or some of their school stuff they can do on their own, they're welcome to do that right away, or if they want to take a little bit more time in the morning and then do that after we meet up together, they have that ability.

So when I look at our schedule, I look at I didn't think of all the things that we need to do and all the things that I want to incorporate and then we'll do those on a fairly regular basis. And we know typically how the days are going to look, but it's not all set out. And if there's something special that's going on, or something that's different for that week, we'll usually talk about that the day before, but it's.

Setting up just these regular things of every month we have a day that we do with the kids. So we'll set up where my husband takes one child and I'll take the other, and then we swap halfway through the day so we get individual time with them. But that's not set up on certain times or certain times or certain days.

We just know that sometime in the month, we're going to get that in. Similarly, for like a date night for us, we'll go and we'll set it up so that we know that once a month we're going to do that and we have kind of a rhythm of one month I plan it, the next month he plans it. And we have that set up as a rhythm, but it's not set up as a routine.

So it's not like the second Friday of the month. We already have this scheduled. And for me, that works a lot better because our days are really not always the same where we're traveling. Sometimes we do other things. So it might not always fit in and with the rhythm too, I feel like it's a little more forgiving.

So if we miss a day or if we miss a week of getting something in, we can always jump back into that rhythm without feeling like we missed out on an appointment or missed out on some routine that we had going on or it throws us off everything. So as you're looking at what your week looks like, what your day looks like, what are some ways that you can incorporate rhythms versus routines?

So kind of getting in the habit of doing similar things. It also does help for weekends versus weekdays. If I know that just when I get up, I go and get my glass of water every day. It doesn't matter what time it is. It's just that that's kind of the habits that I built and building in. So for me, it's also works really well with habit building.

So as you're looking at it, what are the things that you want to do on a regular basis, and then how can you set those up and kind of incorporate them into a rhythm for your household? And one other thing that you can consider when you're looking at rhythms versus routines and something that we do try to do incorporate and sometimes really good at it, and sometimes I, I am not as intentional about it, but.

Putting in those in and outs, breaths is what they call them when you talk about like from a Waldorf perspective, from a homeschooling perspective there's a philosophy of homeschooling that's or not just homeschooling, but of schooling that's Waldorf focus where they focus on from a creative cycle to and from a wellness and developmental cycle for children is looking at rhythms and having like an outbreath.

So you do like something that's going to be interactive, something that's going to burn off a lot of energy, something that's going to be like. pHysical or energetic and then following that up with it in breath is what they call it. And it's something that's more reflective, more quiet, more internal and incorporating that throughout the day so that you don't have a lot of expended energy all at once.

And then you're feeling. Very used up from that. Or you don't have all of this reflective internal things that are happening. There are a lot of sitting still, especially for for Children and sitting still throughout the day that they have these moments of in and out. And I feel like when we do incorporate that into our household, it does help it to flow a lot more.

And it does allow for that. Balance between this extroverted or more of this like masculine energy, you can look at it too. And this feminine energy, and it doesn't have to be necessarily every day, but if you cycle sync with your cycle, things like that, you can kind of get into those rhythms of.

I'm at this stage of my cycle. So no, I'm going to be in more internal or I'm at this stage. And so I know I'm going to be more external, but it's following this pattern or this rhythm rather than I'm going to do the same thing every day. And it's going to look exactly like this. So I'm curious if you.

set up routines for yourself, or if you lean more into rhythms, what that looks like. And as you're looking at your own style and setting up your own patterns, what are those rhythms that you want to incorporate? What are those things that you want to start to have more consistency in? And maybe how can you bring more flow to your day?

So if you are fairly rigid in what you're doing, is there a way to be able to give a little bit more flow to it rather than having a very structured Time specific routine that you follow every day. So if you like this episode, you might also like the village, which is our community and co work space where we have opportunities for connection, accountability and intention setting.

And you can check out the link in the show notes for the upcoming meetups and follow along with our daily prompts.

So thank you for joining us, and I look forward to seeing you again. Bye.