8/2/07 Wanted: Morning & Evening Scaffold on Which to Construct the Day

The scaffold might be emerging..
Last week I wrote about plans to build a "scaffold" to help structure my life as a home-office information worker. Zen Habits just wrote a rather inspiring post about the same, speaking of a morning and evening routine http://zenhabits.net/2007/08/tips-to-establish-a-morning-evening-routine-with-an-august-challenge/.

I’ve written before about how morning and evening routines can create some sense of sanity and calm in your life.These are two habits that you can start today that will make a big improvement in your day.

Now, because of different things that have come up in my life, I’ve fallen a bit out of my routines. I’ve also been changing them over the last few months as my needs have changed.

So, this month, my August Challenge (read more about the Challenge below) will be to focus on re-establishing my daily routines, refined and simplified.

This week has been unusual in that I have a family member sick in the hospital and I'm one of the family responsible for frequent visits etc., so my days are scheduled somewhat differently. Nevertheless it has seemed to me to be the perfect time to build my scaffold, meaning, to build a scaffold that I do every day and that will help me get oriented to the day of work, and then the orientation to winding down, whatever that will be. So here is what I've come to so far: I've only been developing a routine in the evening, the mornings are still full of random email checks, reading my favorite bloggers, and other disorienting activities.

Building my routine...
I have to work on the mornings, and that is my commitment to myself in August. I'll put it up here when I've figured it out. My evenings however, are taking shape. Around 9PM I do Kundalini Yoga, at least 20 minutes and often more like 40 or 50 minutes. Then I shower, or take a bubble bath. This is something I hadn't done in years, and I don't know if I'll keep it up, but it seemed like a good idea this week. In fact last night I even lit candles in the bathroom and meditated while lounging in the tub. Next comes a cold shower, and drying off, getting into sleep clothes. Finally I talk to my husband, sometimes watch a movie (the movie part is entirely out of character, just thought I would try it right now, catch up on the culture a bit since I'm on break from teaching). The biggest change is what follows, I don't fall into 4 or 5 hours of web searching, crawling. Instead I only allow myself only an hour on the computer, and then I review my next action list, my project list, loosely plan the next day. Finally I read, no more computer. I am falling asleep earlier this way, and I am quite relaxed by the time I fall asleep. This seems to me, to be the scaffold for the evening, if only I keep it up for the whole month. And now, its time to build the morning scaffold which thus far seems more difficult. Maybe writing this here will inspire me to get moving, and next week I'll be able to write about the morning routine.