Welcome to the Listening Time Podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 190 of the Listening Time Podcast.
I hope you're doing great.
I hope you're ready for another episode.
In today's episode...
I'm going to talk about my need for routine.
This episode was inspired by my trip that I took recently.
If you remember, in my episode about Puebla, I talked about the fiasco that we had with the flight back.
The word fiasco means there's some huge problem or huge issue that happens.
So you remember that I had this huge fiasco and by the time I got home I just did not want to Okay.
So I'm going to talk a little bit about that and I'm going to maybe talk about it in a more nuanced way.
Nuanced means that it has some complexities to its meaning.
So I'll talk about my need for a routine, but in a more nuanced way based on my recent reflection.
And before we begin, I want to remind you that if you're interested in my pronunciation training, if you want to improve your pronunciation, your accent, things like that, then I highly recommend that you sign up for my membership, specifically Listening Time, Supermember or any of the higher tiers, and you'll get my pronunciation seminars in which I help you understand the different sound patterns in English and make those sounds correctly while you're speaking.
So if you're interested in that, or if you're interested in my advanced podcast episodes, you can check those out.
The link is down below.
And you can also check out my US Conversations podcast.
I have recorded some very interesting episodes recently.
You won't want to miss them.
This podcast is perfect for people that want to start practicing with listening to two people talking and not just one.
This is a great introduction to that.
So if you want to check that out, the link is down below as well.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
Okay, let me talk about my need for routine.
So, like I mentioned, this idea has been in my head ever since I was on vacation and I kind of had an extreme reaction At the end of my trip where I said I don't want to travel for a really long time.
I just want my simple routine and I just want to follow my simple schedule and not have the stress of breaking out of that routine.
It was a very extreme reaction to the terrible end of the trip that we had had trying to get back home and our flight being canceled and having to deal with that airline and also just with my kids being sick.
And it was very, very hard and stressful.
And so I had that extreme reaction.
But after some reflection, I have come to a more nuanced conclusion.
And I want to talk a little bit about that in this episode today.
This is kind of you getting the chance to see inside my thoughts, and I'm just kind of reflecting out loud here.
And I'm sure a lot of you will be able to identify with some of these things as that I'm gonna say.
So first of all, I absolutely need a solid routine in order to function well and to feel good.
There is no debating that for me.
Some people might not need this as much as others.
I think many people need this and would agree with me here.
But some people need a stricter routine than others, let's say, like me, right?
I need to be stricter in terms of my routine in order to feel like my routine is solid, like I have a good foundation right.
So this is essential for me.
I'm not someone who can just wake up every day and be like huh, I wonder what I'm going to do today.
Sometimes that's cool.
I agree.
I know that can be an interesting thing.
I like the ability to be spontaneous for sure.
However, if that is an everyday occurrence, then that is not going to be good for me.
By the way, we can use the phrase an everyday occurrence to describe something that happens every day.
So that can't be an everyday occurrence for me.
In fact, most days need to have some structure that I more or less know in advance.
That's just me personally.
I'm also someone who's extremely time-conscious.
I'm very conscious of time, too conscious, honestly.
I stress too much over time and time-related things and it makes it very hard for me to depend on other people, because most other people are not as time-conscious as I am.
I don't really know anyone of my family or friends that has that same level of time consciousness as I do.
So when I'm with others on vacation, for example, like I just was, I am usually or almost always, the one that has to keep everyone on track.
On track means like on schedule, doing the right thing at the right time.
So I'm the one that has to keep everyone on track.
And if I don't, then people tend to be late and we can't do all the things that we had planned to do.
That is a very common occurrence for me.
If I'm on vacation or just with other people and we have to plan things, I'm the one that usually has to say hey guys, we need to leave now if we want to be there at this time, or whatever.
So I'm extremely time conscious and this plays a role in my need for routine, right?
I like to have my day scheduled in terms of time periods.
That is something that works well for me.
I plan my day.
I plan my trips in blocks of time.
We can use the word block in relation to time to refer to a certain amount of time, like this block of time.
So that's something that I usually do.
And of course there are some negatives about time.
This need for a really solid routine, a very strict routine, I should say.
There are some weaknesses to being too strict, like I am sometimes.
My biggest weakness is that This can be like neuroticism, right?
I might act neurotically.
I might be hyper-conscious of little things and schedule and time and organization and wanting things to be perfect.
And that can be a big weakness, right?
I'm trying to change this.
I am working at this moment on being more laid back in that regard and allowing myself to not pay attention to the schedule or the little details of the day that closely.
So I'm trying to get better at that, but that's still something I struggle with.
So, all that being said, the strange thing is that, despite this, despite the fact that I need a really solid routine, it's such an essential element that makes me feel good.
Despite that, I often crave to break out of my routine.
When we crave to do something, That means that we desire to do it.
So it's kind of strange because, even though I acknowledge how much I need routine, I might daydream about doing different things outside my routine.
And I often change my routine.
I do this pretty often, actually.
And in general, I sometimes crave to break out of my routine.
It seems kind of like a paradox, right?
Like I need routine, but when I'm in my routine, I sometimes want to break out of it.
What's going on there, right?
Well, I think this is normal.
Now that I've reflected on it, this is probably something that many people can identify with.
It's probably not just me, I hope.
This doesn't mean that I hate my routine or I don't need routine.
I need routine for sure.
And I don't hate my routine at all.
Of course not.
But there is a part of me that does need variation, spontaneity, things like that.
So it's interesting because I can go back and forth with this.
There are moments when I'm in my routine and I want to break out of it.
And then there are other moments when I've broken out of my routine and I want to be back in my routine.
So this happens with travel.
So I have the desire to travel, like most people do, and sometimes I'll feel like I want to break out of my routine and go somewhere.
So I take a trip and then during the last part of the trip I really desire to go back home and be in my routine again.
So part of that is because when I'm traveling I have the chance to reflect a lot about my life, my goals.
And I've talked about this before, how this is one of the aspects of traveling that I really like.
I love that.
It allows me to see the bigger picture, step away from my routine a little bit and think differently about my life, my future and my goals and things like that.
And then it makes me eager to come back and be productive and have my routine again.
So part of it is kind of just that aspect of travel for me.
Traveling always makes me do that 100% of the time.
So that's something that I've definitely noticed.
And I think overall, I've realized that routine... stabilizes me.
It makes me feel stable.
It makes me feel like I'm going in the right direction.
I'm doing what I should be doing.
It gives me the proper context throughout my day.
I know what I'm supposed to be doing.
It gives me structure and I like structure.
So that is what routine gives me.
But I think it's also important that, within this structure, I should be able to break the rules, so to say break out of the routine, once I've established these rules.
And I think this is the conclusion that I'm trying to get to here while I'm talking to you.
This is kind of the conclusion I've come to in my reflection.
I want to have this routine that stabilizes me, that gives me structure and that is solid enough that I can break out of it at times and come back to it knowing that it's still there.
And I want to have the freedom to kind of break out of the routine and go back in, without being so drastic and dramatically break out every time and then have to find my structure and stability again every time.
But I do want to be able to. break out of the routine when I have that desire.
So let me talk now about how I think that I personally can have both worlds and have this routine that also allows me to break out of it and come back to it and change it or whatever.
How can I kind of make all of this work for me?
I know my thoughts might seem a little scattered right now.
Scattered means that they're All over the place in different places.
So let me try to bring them all together and talk now about how I can reconcile my need for routine but my frequent desire to break out of my routine.
Well, I wrote down some things here.
So the first one I wrote down is that I need a well established routine that allows me to break out of it in a controlled way.
So like taking big stressful trips. is not something I want to do often.
It's something that really throws me off, so to say.
Like, to be honest, I got back from my trip to Mexico, I think more than two weeks ago.
If I look at the calendar, like two and a half, three weeks ago.
Yeah, actually exactly three weeks ago.
So it's been three weeks and I'm still kind of having trouble with my routine.
Like that trip really shook things up for me.
When something shakes things up, that means it really kind of causes these things to change or be disorganized or go in a different direction or whatever.
So you can see that this huge break in my routine has been hard to manage for me.
So when I say that I want to break out of my routine in a more controlled way, I think that one way I can do that is to have these small trips, maybe take small vacations.
Usually when I do that, I don't feel the same angst.
I don't feel the same anxiety that I need to go back and be in my routine again, because it's not enough time for me to kind of feel really disorganized, right.
If I take a three-day trip or something really, that is a short enough time where I don't feel completely thrown off disorganized, and I usually feel like I just want to enjoy the vacation for every minute of those few days or whatever.
When I take longer trips, I usually feel like it's too long and I start to feel disorganized.
I start to feel like I'm losing my stability, and that's when I start to kind of really crave to get back into my routine, right.
So maybe if I take smaller trips more frequently then I can break my routine in a healthier way and once in a while take longer trips.
That will disorganize me a little more.
I don't want to completely eliminate that from my life, but I want to do that less frequently and maybe take more small trips.
I think that will allow me to break out of my routine in a more controlled way.
And maybe another thing with that is that if I do take a longer trip I can kind of involve my routine in that trip.
Maybe I can work a little bit or have a little bit more time just of a routine, while I'm doing that.
So I don't feel like I'm disorganized for many, many days and I'm missing many days of work.
So that could help as well.
Another thing that I wrote down here is that I don't just want to break out of my routine.
That's not the only way I can kind of mix things up.
I can also just schedule spontaneous time as part of my routine.
I think this really works for me.
If I say that okay, I have these three hours tomorrow to do whatever, then it feels like I'm still scheduling my day.
I still have a general routine, but within that routine there's a block of time where I can do whatever I want.
And so I can kind of feel like I'm changing things up, doing something new, being spontaneous, without actually breaking out of my routine, because I've scheduled that into the routine.
Does that make sense?
I think that's something I'm going to do a lot more of.
I think that's going to help me maintain this balance of wanting routine but wanting spontaneity, wanting to do new things or whatever, but not feel like I'm super disorganized.
So that's going to be something that that I'm gonna implement a lot more.
And then another thing that I already do I already mentioned this is that I change my routine from time to time.
Because I work independently, I can change my work schedule.
I can work whenever I want, really.
So instead of just always sticking to the same schedule, once in a while I actually change my work schedule.
And that kind of adds a little bit of variety to my life.
But I'm still creating a stable routine. right?
I'm just changing what that routine is.
So that's something that I can definitely do.
I'm doing it right now, actually.
I'm kind of shifting my work schedule right now.
Hopefully next week I'll kind of have that structured and I'll have that finalized and I'll be able to kind of have that new routine and within that routine, have some time for spontaneity, for spontaneous things.
I'm hopefully going to have that by next week.
And one last thing that I think is really important for me, that I'm just starting to kind of realize that it might work better.
Is that for me?
Because I work independently, I kind of build my own schedule?
There are certain things I need to do.
I need to write things, record things, edit things, upload things.
That's basically what I do.
And what I normally do is build my schedule and say okay, on this day I need to do these things and it will take me this amount of time.
Because I don't clock in and clock out of work like an employee does.
Clock in and clock out refers to when you start work and when you end work at a specific time, like 9 am to 6 pm or whatever.
So I don't clock in and clock out.
I just do my tasks, and when I'm done, I'm done.
So normally I build my schedule around the tasks that I have to do and I say okay, on Monday I need to do these things and these things should take me this amount of time.
And I kind of follow that schedule that I build for myself.
However, I'm thinking now that, instead of doing that, I'm gonna dictate to myself how much time I wanna work that day, but I am gonna give myself the freedom to choose what it is that I'm gonna do.
So, for example, maybe editing and uploading this episode in total will take me I don't know an hour and 15 minutes, or whatever.
I'm just kind of throwing that number out there and maybe writing the script, for the episode only takes me 30 minutes or something like that.
And each thing takes me a certain amount of time.
So maybe I can say to myself Well, on Monday I want to spend X amount of hours working, so let me choose some different activities.
Maybe I'll write a couple scripts.
Maybe I'll do a little editing.
I don't really feel like recording today, so let me just do writing and editing.
And I can choose enough of those tasks in order to fulfill the amount of hours I want to work.
Does that make sense?
So, instead of saying I need to do these exact tasks, I can say to myself well, I want to work X amount of hours and so let me choose the tasks I feel like doing today.
That will take me about that long.
Because I more or less know how long it takes me to do each of my tasks by now.
So that's pretty easy.
So I'm going to try that, I think.
I'm going to try to kind of change things up and allow myself to just do the tasks that I feel like doing that day.
Some days I feel more like recording.
Some days I feel more like writing.
Some days I feel more like editing.
So I can kind of help myself feel better by doing the things that seem funner to me that day.
But I'll still say that I want to work this amount of hours today or whatever.
So we'll see.
Maybe it won't work, but I think it's a good idea to give me a little more flexibility and give me routine, but allow me to be creative within my routine.
So we'll see how that goes.
I hope that you enjoyed this episode.
I know that my thoughts were really scattered.
Thank you for sticking with me and listening to my reflection here.
Hopefully you got something out of it and maybe there were things that inspired you to do things.
A And I want to remind you that if you want my pronunciation training, then make sure to become a Listening Time super member or any of the higher tiers and you'll get my pronunciation seminars.
People really love these.
They say that it really helps them understand the different sound patterns in English and I've gotten great feedback on those seminars.
So I want to encourage you to use them if you've never tried them before.
And, of course, my advanced episodes are also available for Listening Time family members or Listening Time VIPs.
So the link to check all of that out is down below.
And you can also check out my US Conversations podcast, in which I talk to English speakers from all over the country.
It's a lot of fun and it's great practice for your listening.
That link is also down below as well.
All right.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listening Time.
