Your Evening Routine Is Broken

8 Comments: Your Evening Routine Is Broken

1. @pd I sure hope you’re kidding about socks 🧦 or we are all doomed! Or maybe you have a serious sock drawer. 🙂

2. The more of the night before prep I can do, the better the next morning goes, and the more likely I am to stay on track. I don’t manage it every night, but I’m slowly beginning to do more of this type of preparation more often.

3. I find my day often works better if I start with something that gives me positive energy. Doing a big task first can be draining, and the supposedly easier tasks can then seem very difficult. Mixing and matching effort levels duing the day – where possible – can lead to a good day overall.

4. Really, this is great advice for everyone, but maaaaybeeee we need sime tricks for these tips.
   I had very much this routine in my 30s. Up at 5, breakfast at 6, gym at 7, work at 9. Everything was prepped the night before. The work and routine were exciting and all-consuming. Routine was externally set by work demands.
   In my 50s, without such constant pressure, it takes till 1am to choose which socks for a 6am start. Let alone the rest of the outfit. And I rearrange my launch-pad immediately prior to launch.
   Great ideas while we can sustain them… about 3 days tops.

5. Hmmmmmm – with all due respect (and believe me, I do respect anyone who does this every night), someone to whom all this sounds doable and appealing is probably not subscribing to ADDitude. This is two hours work each night prepping for an event (tommorrow morning) that is still a long way off (tommorrow morning is not now), and denying me the one thing I look forward to at the end of a long hard day – spending an hour on the Internet. So, though I absolutely see the logic in this, the reality is it would rarely ever actually happen. Great concepts though. I wonder if I took meds if tommorrow morning would seem relevant at 8 pm and if I could tolerate the tediousness of spending two hours doing all this every….single….night.

   1. Well, it is, I firmly believe at least in signifikant part a question + matter of commitment.

      Why? Because judging a routine as something “only OCD people would ever WANT to do…” is a personal opinion, not a symptom of ADHD or any other disorder for that matter.

   2. I do several things on the list each night that I’m working the next day – though the coffee is set to finish brewing before I wake up. It really does help, and I’m definitely Inattentive type. My husband on the other hand, is almost definitely Asperger’s (his friend who is diagnosed listed the symptoms,and he’s got most of them). I’ve got all my evening tasks (including things like feed/water dogs & rabbits- separately (daughter has cats and chinchilla), cat boxes, clothes, prep coffee), on the dry erase board – in wet erase ink (doesn’t rub off as easy), and check them off with a dry erase pen. Having the routine really helps.

      In the mornings, I take my gym bag with me every day, even if I’m not going to the gym, so that I don’t forget it when I do go, which has helped me remember my lunch a couple of times (gym bag and lunch box go in the trunk). Mind you, it doesn’t help if I don’t put my lunch in the lunch box, but no system is perfect. I still go to bed WAY to late, and it takes me 4 hours to do what used to take my husband 2 (before a leg injury left him in chronic pain and permanently disabled). Gym bag, lunch box, purse, and jacket (when needed) all are on or by the table. I never thought to call it a launch pad, but will now.

   3. I agree with Smam. Maybe a few of these would make for a good routine, but the whole list? It’s a little… intense. And laying out tomorrow’s underwear Every. Day.? Maybe that belongs on an OCD website rather than on ADDitude…

      Also, I love it when “experts” suggest only checking email at a few, pre-determined times throughout the day. Has no one else worked in a place where co-workers will walk up and say “did you get my email?” 3.5 minutes after sending said email. That’s not really gonna work for a LOT of people.