After Hours© 005

Welcome back to another edition of After Hours©, where we help you find a solution to a common self-employed-creative problem.

I hope you had a lovely holiday season and if you're still enjoying it, stop reading your emails and get back to taking time off.

Todays topic: How to make a routine you can actually follow
Estimated read time: ~6 minutes (Skim time: ~90 seconds)

What’s a routine?

I bet your brain went to: 5am wake ups, turmeric shots, running 10 miles, cold plunges, fasting, sauna, podcasts, bed by 2pm. Discipline. Discipline. Discipline.

Sure, those can be part of a routine for someone. But technically, a routine can also be a morning coffee and a cigarette.

It’s not about copying someone else. It’s about finding a routine that works for you.

A routine is simply a ritual.
A set of actions you follow each day that eventually become subconscious. Usually in the same order, at roughly the same time.

I’m not here to tell you to switch cigarettes for cold plunges.
This After Hours is about building a routine that works for you.

Keep the cigarettes if you want.
But… maybe think about quitting.

What kind of problem is this?

Not having a routine is a Direction + Momentum problem.

When there’s no routine:

• You don’t know what to work on each day → no direction
• You rely on motivation instead of structure → momentum disappears with one bad mood

So then:

• You waste energy deciding instead of doing
• You start many things and finish almost nothing

With a routine:

• No time wasted on decisions
• Progress still happens on bad days
• Each day stacks on the last
• Less mental load and burnout
• Trust builds with yourself because you follow through

Read on for my story on routine or skip ahead to the solution.

I’m not who you think I am

Before I met Eden, I was a freelance copywriter with no planner, no calendar, no time blocking and no routine.

Sometimes I worked at 11pm. Sometimes midday. Sometimes, embarrassingly, I’d wake up at 5am to finish work due that day.

I only looked for clients when I was desperate. Which meant some weeks I made 5k and most weeks I made $0.

A lot of this chaos came from having zero structure in the rest of my life. Random workouts. Ice-cream lunches. Sleeping and waking whenever I felt like it.

Fun for a few days. Terrible as an adult lifestyle.

Eventually I had to go back to a 9–5 with built-in routine. And even then, I was late and called in sick constantly.

I could blame ADHD or my upbringing, but honestly, I just didn’t know how to build a routine.

Fast forward a few years. I met Eden. We built routines. Then we built Boring Studios.

Now I genuinely don’t know how I’d function without one.

Routine solution

A sustainable routine should include something from each category:

• Health: gym, walks, yoga, consistent sleep, real meals
• Focused work: client work, designing, writing, filming, editing
• Admin: emails, invoicing, planning, systems, finances
• Rest: journalling, stretching, reading, doing nothing
• Personal time: hobbies with no productivity goal
• Connection: friends, family, partner, pets
• Flex space: late starts, shorter days, empty time

This week you will

Step one: Decide on a morning and night routine
Go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. Keep it screen-free if possible.

Step two: Write out all your work time
List everything you need to do both in and on the business.

Step three: Write out personal time
Movement, rest, connection, flex time.

Step four: Plan the week
Monday to Sunday. Slot everything in.

Optional: plan or prep meals.

Congratulations. You’ve built a routine.
Try it for a week. Tweak it. Then follow it for months.

Routine isn’t perfection or hustle cosplay. It’s just something you can follow without burning out.

No monks. No extremes. Keep it manageable.

Just make one and follow it. A routine isn’t a routine if you change it every day.

Consistency happens when you follow a plan.

Until next week,

Penelope
Co-Founder of Boring Studios, Writer, Routine Lover