Ep 124: You Hate Routine. Now What?
By Charlotte Cummings | Feel Better Podcast
You Don’t Need to Love Routine to Look After Yourself
There’s a particular kind of frustration that comes up when you want to look after yourself better… but you know you don’t thrive on routine.
You’ve probably tried it before.
The structured plan. The new schedule. The “this time I’ll stick to it” energy.
And maybe it works for a little while.
Until it doesn’t.
Then it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking the problem is you. That you’re not disciplined enough. Not consistent enough. Not wired the “right” way to make it work.
But what if the issue isn’t your lack of consistency… it’s the way you’ve been told consistency should look?
Because the truth is, you don’t have to be someone who loves rigid routines to be someone who takes good care of themselves.
Consistency matters, yes. But consistency doesn’t have to mean doing the same thing, in the same way, every single day.
For some people, that works beautifully. For others, it doesn’t.
And if you’re someone who gets bored easily, resists structure, or finds your energy comes in waves, trying to force yourself into a fixed routine can feel like pushing against your own nature.
That’s where a different approach can be more useful.
Instead of asking yourself to stick to one thing forever, it can be more helpful to think in terms of showing up consistently, rather than doing the same thing consistently.
That might look like moving your body a few times a week, but not always in the same way. One week it’s walks, the next it’s a class, the next it’s something completely different. The common thread isn’t the activity — it’s that you’re showing up for yourself.
For a lot of people, this works even better when you allow for phases or bursts of energy.
You might go all in on something for a few weeks — a new class, a habit, a focus — and then naturally feel ready to move on. Instead of seeing that as failure, you can start to work with it. Let it run its course, and then intentionally choose what comes next.
There’s a big difference between dropping something and replacing something.
That small shift is often what keeps the momentum going.
It can also help to bring your focus in closer. Rather than trying to design a routine you’ll stick to for the next year, think about what this week looks like. Or even just tomorrow.
What do I need?
What would feel supportive?
What would count as showing up for myself?
For some people, that might even be as simple as making a short list the night before. Not a rigid plan, just a guide. A way of reducing the friction of having to decide in the moment.
Because often, the hardest part isn’t doing the thing — it’s starting.
That’s where giving yourself permission to do things imperfectly can make a real difference. Telling yourself you’ll do something for five or ten minutes is often enough to get you moving. And once you’ve started, you might keep going. If you don’t, that still counts.
All-or-nothing thinking is one of the quickest ways to shut this down.
Something is always better than nothing.
Another layer to this, which doesn’t get talked about enough, is the amount of judgement people carry about not being “good” at routine.
Looking around at people who wake up at 5am, follow the same structure every day, and seem to have it all together… and quietly deciding you’re doing it wrong.
But people who are good at consistency are not better humans.
They’re just wired differently.
Some people thrive on structure. Others thrive on variety. Neither is superior — they’re just different ways of operating.
The work isn’t to force yourself into someone else’s system. It’s to understand your own.
For some, that might mean having a “menu” of things that support your wellbeing — a list you can choose from depending on your mood, energy, or time. For others, it might mean leaning into social accountability, like booking into classes or committing to something with other people.
And for some, it’s about reframing self-care altogether.
Not as an obligation. Not as another thing you should be doing.
But as something closer to oxygen.
Something that supports you, fuels you, keeps you going.
When you see it that way, it often becomes easier to show up.
Not because you’re forcing yourself to be disciplined… but because you understand why it matters.
At the end of the day, this isn’t about becoming someone who loves routine.
It’s about becoming someone who knows how to take care of themselves in a way that actually works for them.
And that might look different to what you’ve been told.
But it’s no less valid.
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Let's get into this week's Listner question. I wanted to have a better job of looking after myself. I hate routine.
What do I do? Actually, this is something that I've talked with a few clients about recently too. So what do you do when you want to look after yourself better but actually you don't like routine? Now, there are some reasons why routine can be tougher for some people than for others. That might be that you're neurodivergent and that actually routine is something that is tricky to stick to in some areas of life.
Where life kind of runs with passions or fixations and sticking to a schedule sometimes is something people who neurodivergent love and sometimes it isn't. It can also be that just personality-wise you don't love routine or lifestyle-wise it's hard to stick to a routine because of things like shift work, family dynamics, different things that you're juggling that make a consistent routine tough. So I think the starting place here is recognising that you don't have to be someone who loves routine, discipline, ultra consistency to be someone who looks after themselves well and moves towards those goals.
Now, I think there are lots of areas when it comes to looking after ourselves where consistency does really matter. We don't get those kind of gains or wins without having some kind of consistency to what we are doing. But what I want to hold up here for you to think about is that consistently doing something is really the goal here.
Maybe consistently doing the same things over and over doesn't work for you but consistently doing some things, picking from a bit of a menu, doing something where you are showing up for yourself is what really matters. So there can be variation to what you're doing but doing something on a regular basis is the key thing to start shifting your mind around. It doesn't have to be the same, it doesn't have to be rinse and repeat.
There can be variety that keeps you engaged. It can look different in different weeks. The key thing here is showing up for yourself.
I've also worked with a lot of people in this space where there's actually quite a bit of judgment on themselves about not being someone who likes consistency. So they look at other people's routines. They're five AM wake-ups.
They're early morning workouts and think, wow, I can't do that. I'm a worse human than they are and that is quite simply just not true. My strong encouragement to you here is don't judge yourself.
Free yourself from that. And get back to thinking about, this has got nothing to do with my value. This is all about working out what works for me and that is completely okay.
Now, people who don't love consistency often do better with approaching things in bursts. So we want to think about working with that tendency towards doing things in a burst of activity or following something that might be a little bit of a hyperfixation or flavour of the month for a while. Now, my spoiler here is I hate consistency.
There are very few things that I do on a consistent basis and I've learnt to work with myself around this. So I've learnt to follow my hyperfixations for a period of time. I'm going to give you a little example of that.
Something I'm doing at the moment is RPM biking classes at the gym. I'm really enjoying them at the moment. But I'm going into that knowing that that enjoyment is actually going to come to an end.
I'm loving it. I'm happy to do a few classes a week at the moment. But I know that over time I'm not going to enjoy this so much and I'm going to need to mix up what it is that I'm doing.
So I will stay in tune with how long I'm going to let this run for. When I stop enjoying RPM, I will challenge myself to think about what am I going to do now? What am I going to switch that out with? So the key thing being giving yourself permission to stop one thing, but challenging yourself to start something else that works with your goals around looking after yourself. There can be other ways to manage that too, like you might think I'm going to do 20 of these classes and then see how I feel after that.
Picking a number or a time frame can be really helpful here. I've also worked with clients where we've approached things in blocks of time. Like what is the plan for this week or this month? Getting out of thinking that we're going to set something up where we're expecting ourselves to follow through with it for an entire year knowing that we're going to fail at that.
Your routines don't have to be things that you stick with forever from the time that you set them up. You can move and adapt them over time. I once lived with a flatmate who was the absolute master of consistency.
They ate the same breakfast every day. They took the same lunch to work. They woke at exactly the same time.
They had a gym routine that was consistent. And my life in theirs couldn't have looked any more different. But we both loved the way that we managed our lives and it worked for us.
So know that there are those people who lock in and do something the same forever and actually struggle to change or adapt to the new things. And there are other people who are wired in a way where that variety is actually the spice of their life and they enjoy running things based on their interests, based on the energy and following that through. This can be where it's really helpful to introduce something like themes.
So thinking about what it is that you will do this month or a particular focus that you're wanting to bring your attention to. I also have a little routine that I've talked about on the podcast before where I simply ask myself on a Sunday night what my well-being goals are for the week ahead. That works so much better for me than being locked into a particular way of being.
Now an extension on that is I've had clients have also really enjoyed making a list the night before for the next day. So thinking about how that day went, how you're feeling, what it is that you're noticing and what you might need the next day and approaching things on a day by day basis. Sometimes it can be helpful to introduce a little bit of structure around that though.
So something like using the notes on your phone to make a plan, what am I doing tomorrow to look after myself? Where are the blocks for me within the day? Also I've found for lots of clients particularly who are neurodiverse. It is challenging to think about starting something. So sometimes our mental barrier is more around procrastinating getting going than it is actually doing the thing.
Now something that can be helpful to do here is to use timers or to commit to yourself that you're going to do something for 5 or 10 minutes and then see how you feel. I know that if I say to myself I'm just going to get out there for a run and I'm going to be able to turn around in 5 minutes time if I'm not enjoying it, is enough to help me follow through with doing the thing that I'm not feeling like doing. The odds are that most of the time I actually think oh no now that I'm out here I'm really enjoying this and I'll keep going.
But I do know that I can let myself off the hook there. If that day the run's just 10 minutes, 5 minutes out and back that is totally fine too. Sometimes why we find it difficult to start things is we don't give ourselves permission to move the goalposts and not completely follow through with it to some kind of perfect or ideal standard.
So yes maybe you do ideally want to go for a 40 minute run that day but maybe the barrier is setting yourself up for all or nothing. Instead of setting yourself up that a little bit is okay too. Now I think here's something we can tell ourselves is I'm a person who looks after myself.
Instead of getting into this binary thinking around I'm not a person who's good at routine and there are other people who are good at routine and consistency. Let's drop that as a metric of how good you can be at looking after yourself and pursuing your own self care and wellbeing goals. Instead I'd be encouraging you to think about this identity of showing up for yourself of I'm a person who takes good care of myself because it's not essential that you love consistency and routine in order to be someone who is good at looking after themselves.
You can also be helpful to think about rewards. Now I know that some people go oh isn't that a little bit babyish but some people are more motivated when there is something in it for them. Now if you need a sticker chart be my guest.
If you need a list that you can tick off or some kind of app that tracks your progress think about utilizing rewards or progress tracking in a way that works for you and keeps you feeling encouraged and motivated. It might be that when I've done this a certain number of times I'm going to reward myself with this. Or when I've done this a certain number of times then I'm going to have a bit of a review but think about those finite commitments and the rewards you can give yourself along the way.
Some people are also more social when it comes to being consistent. Often if we're asking people for consistency we're kind of defaulting to asking them for a solo effort. So maybe one of the things to troubleshoot around here is perhaps you are good at consistency if it's in a social context.
i.e. you might be better at showing up for a group fitness class or some kind of bootcamp or some kind of self care activity like a meditation class. You're not great at doing any of those things on your own but you are good at doing them in a social context if you've got a commitment to something on a particular day at a particular time and with other people. This is all about working out what works for you.
A key reframe though when it comes to looking after yourself is thinking about caring for yourself as being oxygen and not obligation. I know a lot of people have found their commitments to themselves a lot easier to keep when they see them as essential things that really help them keep going. Rather than being must do's should do's you're a bad person if you don't do these things items on their calendar.
So think about what you're doing to look after yourself as oxygen is something that keeps you going that is vital and important to your survival. Also when I've worked with people who haven't loved consistency they tend to do really well with a menu. So a list of really great activities and things that they can move towards from a self care or well being perspective that they can choose from.
So they don't have decision making for tea so anything off that list is considered a great thing to do. But think about the barriers when it comes to what it is you're avoiding doing and if you need to make some of those things easier to do within your day. Now my unpopular opinion here is people who are good at consistency are not better than people who are bad at consistency.
I see many people berate themselves because they can't do the 5A routine all the time. They can't keep that up for the rest of their lifetime. They can't look after themselves in the same way that other people do.
Well the spoiler here is that you can find ways to look after yourself that work for you. The consistent girlies are no better than those who need to run with a menu at a whim following the energy and their hyper fixations. You can be good at looking after yourself too.
Well I hope that this episode has given you a number of ideas and strategies if you're someone who doesn't love routine but still wants to work on looking after themselves. There are lots of hacks, things that you can try and ways to get through this but being consistent isn't the only way to be good at looking after yourself. Give yourself permission, leave yourself off the hook and finally work out what works for you.
