10 Ways to Break Up Your Routine

I’m a sucker for a good routine. I’ve been known to stand in the same spot every day while I wait for the subway, eat the same thing for breakfast and even pick out my clothes before going to bed at night.

Goodness knows that you oftentimes need your routines to keep you on schedule. I sure do! They can help you order your life, and bring a sense of normalcy to an otherwise hectic schedule.

However, given enough power and time, they can potentially dampen your productivity. If your “routine” is starting to feel more like a rut, try boosting your creativity by shaking things up!

Here’s how to do it:

Take a different way to work: We take the same way to work every day, and for good reasons: The shortest route, the least stressful way, the commute that takes you past your favorite coffee shop. Occasionally breaking from this rut can bring a fresh perspective. After all, your mind is used to seeing the same sights for roughly the same time every single day. Changing this up could be a stimulating experience to wake you up to a new way of thinking or see a new neighbor you didn’t even know existed!

Change up your lunch: Always grab a burger? End up chatting with the same people about the same things? Change it up! Eating a salad with lots of leafy greens can be a healthy way to get the nutrition you need to focus. Picking a new spot means you might run into new people to chat with too.

Switch up your exercise: Services such as ClassPass offer a variety of classes and workouts you can try. So go give a spin class a shot, or maybe try out yoga.

See a speaker: There are always community events going on. It could be that seeing a talk at your local library is just what you need to bring you back to being productive.

Play a game: If you usually wind down after work with a glass of wine and Netflix, breaking out a deck of cards or a chessboard and calling over a friend can get your mind moving in the right direction.

Catch a movie: If you love documentaries, maybe seeing something different, a sci-fi action movie perhaps, could shake you up and break you from your rut!

Reconnect with an old friend: Call a friend that you haven’t seen in a while and ask her out for a spontaneous drink.

Change your entertainment: Find yourself always going to a play on the weekend?

Mix up your music: If you’re usually an AC/DC kind of a person, maybe getting into improvisational jazz or listening to 90s ska will get you thinking out of the box.

Take on a new hobby: If you’ve wanted to learn how to play the guitar, or paint portraits, or a million other things, now might just be the time to try! This can be really refreshing.

What are some ways that you bounce back from a rut?