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Developing a routine is easy. Maintaining a routine is difficult.

At least it is for me. If I miss a couple of days — sometimes just a day — I completely fall off the routine. My running is a good example: I made my goal, then crummy weather returned and I ramped up my karate workouts in prep for a big review, and I haven’t run since. I want to rectify that, but I’m finding it difficult to shake the new routine, especially when we’ve been seeing thunderstorms and tornado warnings for the last week or so.

I’m glad I found Steve Pavlina’s blog post “How to Maintain Not-Quite-Daily Habits”. He offers five tips, most of them easy to follow. It’s easy to see how they could be effective, and I’m already looking into how I can start setting up one or two.

I’ll add a related note to the list, that of developing a specific workout routine. Rather than making up a karate workout as I go along, for example, I could develop a full calendar which would tell me exactly what to practice on a given night. It would help me both make sure I cover everything and give me a visual checklist for the day so I know when I have and haven’t worked out.

Anyone have a better way to maintain routines?