If you are feeling like it’s a bit slow going, and you’re not hard-charging into the new year. Please know you’re not alone. As we go into the month of February, I am focusing on how much I LOVE my community. I had one specific community member say to me, “I would love to see what a day in the life of Chelsi Jo is like.” That’s exactly what we’re going to do here! I will be walking you through my daily routines.

I’m going to show you how I structure my day to meet the needs of so many people and my work without feeling overwhelmed. I’m going to be taking you through my daily routines including my morning routine block, AM block, work block, PM block, and nighttime routine block to give you a sense of what my typical day is like. Is it going to be perfectly structured and beautiful? Absolutely not.

My life is a lot like yours. What I can offer you in this blog is how I navigate daily routines, time blocks, not multi-tasking, and focusing on being effective and efficient with my time. I do this so I can show up and be prepared well. And even have a little time for myself in the process and reaching my own goals. That’s what I want for you as well!

The Morning Routine

Every day I get up at 6:30 a.m. I used to get up at 4:30 a.m., but it’s changed over time. Right now in my season of life, my morning routine block has shifted in the last six months to be 30 minutes to one hour. I have tried to take my power hour of work out of my morning routine block, and just crunch that down into basically addressing emails quickly or addressing my team in Voxer, and that’s it.

So in that morning routine, I’m just addressing those quick work tasks and getting myself ready. If I have a longer morning routine block (which I try for 3 days out of the week) I’m sitting down for my devotional, study, or read. That’s when I’m spending my morning a little more quietly and slowly.

I normally like to start my day with what I’m doing in my PM block. I look at my day very differently, and look at my day as starting in my PM block because that’s the domino that tips everything! As I was writing this, it was so challenging because so much of what I prep for the day of actually happens the day before.

In the past my morning routine block has been longer, even including a workout, but for now my morning routine bumps into my AM block in our before-school routine.

The AM Block

I get breakfast going and make sure the kids are up. My kids are five and ten so they can pretty much do their morning routine on their own. The five-year-old does almost everything by herself as long as we’ve done our part in our nighttime routine and PM block the day before. So while they’re doing that, I’m making breakfast. If my husband is home, he’s making breakfast while I pack lunches. We have breakfast on the table. While they’re eating I’m typically prepping lunches if my husband is not home. I usually don’t sit and eat breakfast with my kids. It works out for me to pack a fresh lunch for them while they’re eating.

After I drop them off at school, three days out of the week, I will go to the gym. Whenever I get home, I take that time to do a quick tidy-up. Then I’ll get ready, I’ll have my after-workout smoothie or shake. Finally, I’ll sit down for my work block until I have to go get the kids from school. On the days that I don’t go to the gym when I come home, I still do something quickly for my house. That’s usually when I’m putting in a fundamental need for my home. This could be an errand or a zone cleaning, but those are pretty fluid and flexible. If my husband is home, and it’s not a gym day sometimes we will have scheduled a day date for that time.

The Work Block

When I sit down to my work block I’m either at home or in my coworking space. I follow my workflow. I have an operating system for my business and it tells me exactly what I need to be doing each day. My Monday card tells me what I need to be doing on Monday, and the same with every other day. I try to be done with my work by 2:30 p.m. so I can clean up my workspace, grab my afternoon snack, and go out the door to get the kids.

There are some days when my husband is home, and I chose to go to my coworking space and get a really long day in, and I’ll come home when it’s time for dinner. On those days I work through the after-school routine which starts that PM Block

The PM Block

Picking up the kids kicks off that PM Block for me. Depending on what day of the week it is, this is another place I put a fundamental need. That could be family time or a to-do with the kids. We have our after-school routine. They unload their backpacks on their own, they have a snack, they work on their homework, and we talk about their day. I’m usually taking a look at what is inside their school folders to see if anything has a specific date or needs to be scheduled. Whatever it is we do it immediately. I sign any papers and immediately put them back in their backpack. Everything is taken care of right then and there so I don’t have to worry about it again.

This is one of my favorite routines. It helps the kids recenter after a day of school, and it grounds us in what’s about to take place the rest of the day. We spend some family time together until I start cooking at 4:30. The kids go play unless we do an activity. Sometimes I’m updating things on Voxer or sending a few texts with family, but for the most part, I am done with work at this point. My laptop is put away. I’m not working anymore because I want to focus on my family. I also want to focus on cooking nourishing foods for my family. I’m trying to make sure that time is really structured for me to be in the kitchen and even for my kids to be in the kitchen.

The After Dinner Routine

After we eat dinner, we all clean up. The girls will take a shower, and get ready for bed. We read books together. Our oldest helps me put my youngest to bed. After that my oldest gets some quality one-on-one time with us. We’ll play games or sometimes watch a show. Sometimes we’ll work on projects with her. During the week it’s lights out for her at 8 p.m.

Once she’s in bed, I have from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. in the evening where Blaine and I hang out. Every once and a while I’ll have to work. There might be something left over from the day that I have to work on so he’ll do his own thing for a little while. I try to make that not happen very often.

The Nighttime Routine

I really try to make this a down, chill time for both of us. This could mean we’re both reading or watching a documentary, but mostly we like to chat with each other. I try to make sure that my phone is put away and not available. We like to unplug and come to bed for at least 15 minutes before we go to sleep. That’s when I do things like my skincare routine. I also LOVE to pick out my outfits for the next day. This is one of my favorite routines to set myself up for the next day.

A Few More Tips for Establishing Daily Routines

This is pretty much what I do every day of my life. Everything is pretty clean-cut, systemized, and automated that it takes so much of the guesswork out of it. It’s really slow-paced. That allows me to take curve balls when they come at me. It allows me to help people when they need help.

Daily Routines and Discipline

However, if I’m not careful it also allows me to waste time. If I’m not careful with my time it’s really easy to come home from the gym and get sucked into Instagram. It’s so easy to not take a shower right away, and realize my work block is about to start because I was chatting too much. I’ve made sure I haven’t jam-packed my day so much, that I can’t adjust to the normal lack of discipline that we all struggle with. Being more disciplined and focusing on the micro parts of my life is what I’m doing this year.

A day in my life for me is just that routine. That’s what I focus on, and it’s working for me right now. But it changes, and I’m ok with it changing from time to time. Right now I’m so grateful and settled into this schedule that I’ve created for myself.

It’s OK for Your Schedule to Change

If I wrote this for you six months ago it would’ve been very different. I’ve been able to focus wholeheartedly on what I need even when my husband’s schedule fluctuates. That has taken me years of practice to get right. My labor of love is to always lean into what other people need. At some point, I realized I wasn’t getting what I needed by doing that.

Now setting up these different A and B days and knowing that I have 20 hours on the books for work. No matter what we’re doing for the year, I know that I can manage that. I now know how much time I need to spend on my family. I know how much I need to spend on house tasks and finances or even dates and connecting with my husband.

Hopefully, you’ve found a few nuggets inside a typical day in my life, and my daily routines. I hope you can apply some of them too or make some tweaks. If nothing else, I hope this inspires you to sit down and rework or line up your routine stacks inside my five time block method. I hope this helps you ditch the overwhelm and stop running around like a crazy lady and feel like you can rest easy when you go to bed at night.

Still Wanting More on Daily Routines?

If you want access to all my systems in all of it-learning how to set up time blocks, routine stacks, and your fundamental needs, communicate these systems to your family so they’re on board as well, and automate your tasks instead of constantly trying to recreate the wheel every week. It also includes access to my meal planning system, my budgeting system, and my marriage retreat system. All of that is in the Academy, plus the group coaching! It is a steal of a deal! Just go to chelsijo.co/academy. You can find more details on how you can join this program. 

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