Navigating Transitions: How to Maintain Good Habits When Your Routine Changes

Habits are easier to keep when we have a predictable, consistent schedule. For most people, when we do things in the same way, at the same time, every day, we experience less decision fatigue and we rely less on our own willpower to stick to our healthy habits—they become automatic.

However, at various times, we may experience major shifts in our routines, which can make it harder to maintain the habits that keep us happy and healthy.?

Many workplaces have changed their expectations of in-person work. Some people work from home a few days a week or have a schedule that varies from week to week. We might also experience a disruption to our routines during the summer due to travel, Summer Fridays, school vacation, or if we take a sabbatical, retire, or start working for ourselves.

When we think about the factors that make it easier to keep up our good habits during a traditional five-day in-person workweek—especially foundational habits such as eating and drinking right, getting enough sleep, moving our bodies, and de-cluttering—we can consider how we might create those circumstances for ourselves to keep up those habits after a big transition.

Time

Most of us have weekday/weekend habits. We have habits for the five-day work week, and different habits for the two-day weekend. Maybe you get up at 7 a.m. during the week, and 9 a.m. on the weekends. Or you don’t drink alcohol during the week, but have a few drinks on Saturdays and Sundays.?

However, if you don’t have a consistent 5-day/2-day schedule, it may be harder to keep up good habits.

If you leave for work at 8 a.m. five days a week, or you work from home five days a week, you have a predictable schedule on which to hang your habits. But if you head to the office on different days or at different times…well, it’s harder for habits to stick. If your schedule varies from week to week, the more consistency you can create, the easier it will be to stick to your healthy habits.

You might use “if-then” statements to plan for any variation in your schedule: “If I go into the office, then I’ll go to the gym on the way home. On days I work from home, I’ll go for a run after I clock off.”?

If you’re taking time off from work, or if you’re creating your own schedule, you might use the Strategy of Scheduling by putting your important habits on the calendar alongside work tasks or building them into your vacation itinerary to help you maintain consistency. Get as specific as you find useful. Take a look at author Ursula K. LeGuin’s writing routine:?

You might also use the Strategy of Pairing to pair your habit with a behavior unrelated to whether you go in to work. For example, if you tend to forget to take your medication on days you go into the office, pair the habit with something you’ll do no matter what, like making coffee or taking a shower.

Tips

• Wake up at the same time every day
• Set an alarm to get ready for bed at the same time every day
• If you’re a morning person, exercise first thing in the morning so that habit isn’t subject to your schedule
• Use time-blocking and scheduling to create structure in your day even if you don’t work
• Be realistic: Don’t forget to schedule breaks for rest and meals
• Determine your own natural rhythms using an energy tracker and schedule demanding tasks for times of day you feel energized, productive, and creative.

Space

Another challenge to habits created by working from home or being self-employed is the lack of physical separation between “work” and “home.” Getting dressed, commuting, and having a dedicated work space are all cues that trigger a set of work-related mindsets and behaviors.?

When we’re working, exercising, socializing, and resting in the same space, it can be harder to switch between those different “modes.” Spending the day in your pajamas or working on your laptop in bed might feel convenient, but these habits can make it more difficult to focus when we’re trying to work, or to stop working when we’re trying to rest.

Tips

• Get dressed—use clothes (work clothes, gardening clothes, exercise clothes) to signal to your brain that it’s time to change “modes”
• Mark transitions by taking breaks between tasks
• Set aside a dedicated space in your home, however small, for work
• Use a coffee shop, library, or co-working space as your “office”
• Create a “clocking off” ritual to signal the end of work
• Make the temporary permanent—are there any temporary systems you put in place when you first started working from home that could use an upgrade? Are you still using an uncomfortable dining room chair as your office chair?

Other People

Many people—and certainly Obligers —benefit from accountability in their habits, and the workplace tends to offer many forms of accountability. When you go into an office every day, healthy habits like lunchtime walks and regular connection with co-workers are much more convenient. The school year also comes with structure and accountability like carpooling, after-school sports, extracurricular activities, and playdates that may go out the window during summer break.

It’s easy to think you “should be able to” keep up habits regardless of other people. But if you’ve found certain habits are more difficult to maintain when you don’t have systems of accountability, you may need to look for new ways to get it. (If you need ideas, I review some popular accountability measures here .)

Suit Yourself

In Better Than Before , my book about habit change, I write about the 21 strategies we can use to make or break our habits. You might think, “Why include so many strategies?” I identify 21 strategies because people form habits in many different ways.

As we think about our habits when navigating a transition, it’s always useful to ask: “When have I succeeded in the past?” If you’ve kept a good habit successfully when it was tied to some aspect of your work life, consider whether you’ll need to find a new way to keep that habit strong, if the structure of your work life changes significantly.

For instance, if you consistently went to a Zumba class with a co-worker after work on Wednesdays, try to figure out why you succeeded in meeting that aim. Was it the convenience of going after work? Was it knowing that your co-worker was counting on you? Was it your love for Zumba? Thinking about a past success can help set you up for the future. Because if what you need is accountability, doing an online Zumba class might not work—but if it’s your love for music and dance that kept you going, maybe an online class would work.

To understand what circumstances help them to keep their good habits—and not—many people find my Four Tendencies personality framework helpful. To find out if you’re an Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel, take the free, quick quiz here (more than 3.2 million people have taken it). Once you know your Tendency, you can much more effectively set yourself up for success.

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