Today, we’re talking about another common habit bottleneck: the chaotic routine.

This is a familiar one. Probably everyone can recognize the feeling of having a really chaotic day. Your day is running away from you and you feel like you you’re a side character in a dramatic play that you didn’t audition for.

Usually, at the end of the day, you’re exhausted and even though you may have done a lot of things and you were running from one place to the next, you don’t feel like you accomplished anything.

But I want to encourage you because establishing a routine that works for you can be done and it’s less complicated than you think.

In this chapter, we’re doing to talk about why chaotic routine is a common habit bottleneck and what makes this hard for introverts in particular. We’re going to talk about 4 reasons why being disciplined to stick to the same routine every day isn’t the best strategy for everyone and we’re going to look at a few examples to help you create a routine that works well for you.

I identified ‘chaotic routine’ as one of the common habit bottlenecks because I get a lot of questions related to this. A LOT of people struggle with feeling chaotic throughout their day.

People will ask me things like:

I want to learn a new language or I want to pick up an old (or new) hobby but how do I possibly fit that into an already packed schedule?

or My life is so chaotic right now that I feel like I don’t have any time for myself

or From the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep, I’m just running. I hardly have time to catch my breath.

My clients work from full time or part time home and in the office and for them, feeling chaotic with their day is very common because they’re handling work, family, house chores, birthday parties and what not all within the same time windows.

It can be hard to come up with a routine that works for you and for allows you to do your work well and be there for your loved ones.

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Related chapters: 044 | Introduction to habit styles: https://link.chtbl.com/whats-your-habit-style

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🎵 Andrés Rodríguez

Maybe you’ve experienced this before: You were doing well with your healthy habits but now things just feel hard. You start skipping a day. Then another day. Then another day. You start to feel guilty. You start slipping back into old patterns and unhealthy habits you wanted to change. It’s probably not the first time this has happened either and you start wondering what’s wrong with you and why you’re just not disciplined enough. A lot of people struggle with this situation. In fact, in a survey that I sent out, across platforms 44% of people said that falling into old patterns is the #1 reason why they can’t seem to make their healthy habits stick. This is related to the habit bottleneck that we’re going to talk about today: the off-the-wagon misunderstanding. And I’m not talking about drinking alcohol, as this expression is often used. Everyone has run into this habit bottleneck in their lives. It’s when things feel really chaotic and it’s really hard to stay on top of things. The off-the-wagon-misunderstanding can happen when you’re trying to learn a new habit, when you’re circumstances have changed or when you’ve done something that’s really drained your energy and you’re trying to keep everything together. In this chapter of the podcast, we’re going to talk about how this habit bottleneck can get in the way of managing your personal energy and what introverts can do to remove the off-the-wagon bottleneck.

00:00 Falling into old patterns is a common habit bottleneck

01:55 Welcome to productive introvert community

02:29 Feeling like you've fallen off the wagon?

04:25 Shifting your focus

06:32 Figuring out your Peace Of Mind area

09:08 Recharging your energy is key for introverts —

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▶️ Get on the waitlist for the free gift bundle ‘Successfully planning your day for introverts: Discover a willpower-free way to learn healthy habits easily - no matter how busy or overwhelmed you are’: go.thefrankermessage.com/waitlist

▶️ Blog and client stories: ⁠⁠https://www.thefrankermessage.com/blog⁠⁠

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🎵 Andrés Rodríguez

When I decided to coach introverts working from home specifically around healthy habits, I thought I had a good idea of what a habit is.

But as I started to talk about this with people, I realized that there are many different ways that people think about habits and that I really didn’t understand what habits are as well as I thought I did.

After working with 1-1 clients as a productivity coach for a few years, I realized that if we paid attention to a few key habits for my clients, it brought them much more joy and peace of mind, and that ended up achieve what they wanted more easily.

That’s when I knew that’s what I wanted to focus on for the foreseeable future.

But, as I started to explore, there were also a lot of questions about habits.

I’m going to make a series to explore all these questions in different chapters of this podcast. I’ll create a playlist on YouTube with all the habit related chapters as I go, so check that out if you want to know more about sustainable healthy habits for introverts who work from home.

For example: Is a habit really automatic? Are some people just not disciplined enough to form habits? Why do we get stuck in bad habits? Not to mention, how long does it take to form a habit and what’s the best way to learn a new habit?

Today, we’re going to start at the beginning: what is a habit? we’re going to talk about how habits can help you to conserve energy, especially if you’re an introverts. And why we get stuck in a bad habits.

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🎵 Andrés Rodríguez