11 Steps to Create Your Evening Routine

In 1961, Maxwell Maltz, M.D., published a booklet called Psycho-Cybernetics, whcih means “Programming the mind to go to a productive goal, so that it can reach the goal of peace of mind each of us wants.” In his paper, Maltz discussed the importance of routines and habits as necessary to support productivity: “Many questionnaires have shown that old habits require at least 21 days to fade away and be replaced by new ones.”

Note: This article is based on blogger Cecilia Meis, where she talks about her experience building an evening routine.

Maltz based his statement on observational studies he conducted on himself and his patients, which led to counting it as a given fact in some of them, which is that it takes 21 days to acquire a habit or get rid of it. Still, in fact, research has proven that there is no specific period for this and that it may range from 18 to 254 days to become a well-established habit, and it is no wonder in this. The style and duration of acquiring habits and establishing routines varies from person to person.

Habit, Routine and Difference Between Them:

Gaining  habits is a more major research topic than routine, so it is essential to understand the differences between them. Habits require some signals to become part of the routine over time. For example, washing your hands after getting out of the bathroom is a habit because using the bathroom is a motivation to wash your hands. It is an automatic behavior we learned from our parents and teachers and signs published in public bathrooms.

Handwashing itself is a habit, but when it becomes part of another set of habits, it becomes a routine. For example, your morning routine may begin with the first step, which is the ringing of the alarm, then drinking coffee, reading the newspaper, bathing, dressing, and going to work. Each of these activities separately is a habit in itself, but together they form a routine.

Meaningful routine:

Each of us has a daily routine, whether this routine is meaningful or not. We have chosen some habits, good and bad for ourselves, to form this daily routine. For example, I have a passion for eating sweets after finishing meals, whatever they are. So, this habit has become linked to the time of eating, and then over the years, it has become a semi-automatic habit.

So, my goal is to reshape the routine to make it easier for me to improve things like productivity, restful sleep, general health, and many more, and that also means trying to find ways to get rid of bad habits, such as eating dessert after eating, which requires daily attention to my actions to work on achieving my goals.

Is the morning routine more important than the evening?

The morning routine is a common topic, but the evening routine should be a necessary basis and a way to take advantage of the following morning. The better the night, the better the next morning. Suppose you spend your evenings enjoying desserts in front of the TV, how will you feel the following morning? If  you spend your evenings practicing meditation, journaling, and talking with your loved ones, you will receive the next morning with activity and joy.

Your  morning and evening routines are connected, and both are equally important. In this article, we'll talk about night routines in particular.

11 Steps to Adopt Your Evening Routine:

The most important thing to remember here is that the routine varies a lot from person to person. A routine may be suitable for one of them without the other. If you force yourself to be active at night and become tired, it will lead to frustration and failure.

1. Identify the current routine:

This is a very critical step, as you are likely to have dozens of daily habits so that you may not realize that you are doing it. So, start modifying that routine by keeping a small diary with you, and writing down every act that you notice that you have done that day. For example, if you always wake up two minutes before the alarm clock rings, or always add an extra spoon of sugar in your coffee, write it in your diary. Although these actions seem harmless, they are associated with unconscious behaviors that shape our identity, so knowing them is the first step in determining the habits that you want to keep or replace.

2. Create the right motivations:

If you want to build a habit, give yourself the motivation to do so. It is what makes daily reminders in common diet and exercise applications so effective. They are practices that push us out of our unconscious daily routine and remind us of the procedure we are trying to add to our new routine. So, try to make these motivations as natural as possible. For example, if you are trying to eat fresh fruits and vegetables as snacks instead of potato chips or biscuits, put dishes of them on several tables throughout your home or sliced vegetable bags the size of snacks to facilitate taking them when you are in a hurry.

3. Adopt an appropriate lifestyle:

Do not try to adopt a lifestyle that does not suit your life. For example, if you find it difficult to eat breakfast and eat the necessary fruits and vegetables, fresh juice will be a good idea for you, and you may put the blender on the table as part of your evening routine to be a motive for acquiring this habit and prepare all the ingredients of the juice in advance. If you do not, you probably will not have time to cut the fruits or take the blender out of the kitchen cabinet early in the morning.

4. Failure to comply with a certain period of time to acquire the habit:

Meaningful routines are lifestyle changes. Notice the word "life" in that sentence, where it can take 18 to 254 days to build a habit because time varies not only with different people, but also with various habits. Drinking eight glasses of water a day may be easier than sitting down to write 1,000 words from a book a day.

Getting into the habit of drinking daily smoothies was very easy for me, and it took about 30 days for it to become part of my routine, but the daily exercise wasn't that easy; it required a lot of motivation, and I still had a long way to go to get into the habit.

5. Reduce options:

It is challenging to build a routine because habits are difficult to form. Part of the evening routine I am trying to construct is to reduce the time of watching TV to reading an hour before bedtime. Researchers have discovered that our brains work to solve our big problems and complex thoughts during sleep, so I thought that if I read what stimulates my thinking before bed, my brain is going to produce meaningful ideas that will improve my life. As much as I want to watch an episode of my favorite series, but that is not the kind of ideas I want to feed my mind.

I avoid the option of watching TV until I read more by "hiding" the remote control in a drawer and putting the e-reader or book in a visible place such as the table, as this serves as an incentive to practice the new habit and make the appropriate decision.

6. Avoiding what leads to a return to previous habits:

This advice is essential and intuitive at the same time, as habits are formed by motivation. If you are used to drinking carbonated water in the evening, replace those cans with water bottles.

7. Allocate specific time to technology:

A growing body of research shows that technology can negatively affect us at night, as blue lights from screens keep our minds busy and can negatively affect restful sleep and mood. Even our physical condition, not to mention that the majority of what we watch on TV is not purposeful. This does not mean that you need to sell your TV and stay isolated from the outside world, but rather, you can control it by setting a strict deadline to watch it every night, which allows you to relax naturally and allocate evening hours to helpful things, such as communicating with your friends or recording things you are grateful for in your life in your journal.

8. Relaxation:

We sometimes have trouble getting our brains to stop thinking at night, and I've found that some simple stretching exercises, or a short yoga session, help to feel relaxed and fall asleep. For others, reading a short chapter of their favorite novel is enough to help them sleep. What is important is that what you are doing is not a strenuous activity that is active in your body and mind. It is not what we want at this time.

9. Not being afraid of some default:

Another spectacular aspect of the research was that habit acquisition did not need to be fully adherence as we thought. A 2010 study reported that participants who had a day of shorter practice had a lower desire to establish habits than participants who had a daily habit.

After all, it's a lifestyle change, and that doesn't mean blaming yourself for a day you didn't commit to. In fact, that kind of negative response can make us resist the change overall.

10. Planning for the next morning:

In my experience, the best part of my evening routine is planning for the following morning; it's part of the relaxation process that assisted me feel like my day was complete. As we usually do when the restaurant or store closes, I evaluate my day's events, such as things that went well and what I accomplished, and what I still have to do, as it helps me make a plan to walk on the next morning. When I wake up, I can start my day with a goal in my pocket, instead of spending the first few hours - which I found to be the best hours of the day - doing meaningless or distracting tasks.

11. Tracking progress:

Similar to creating a diary to record your tasks at the beginning of each day, keep a diary as you acquire a new set of habits, and write down what you succeeded in adopting, and what was easy or difficult. This allows you to continue to customize your new routine to suit you more.

Remember that a routine is not a 30-day punishment or challenge that will magically solve your problems. It is a way to achieve a goal and boost productivity.