Routines help students stay on task


Marissa Almack

Wake up, go to school, practice, work, and then go home; routines help to bring order to daily lives. The daily cycle of eat, sleep, and repeat can feel repetitive for some but often it helps to create balance to hectic lives. The order and structure a routine creates enhances our abilities and productivity.

According to, people who have a routine have a greater sense of ownership, organization, and familiarity in life. Things are not as unpredictable or unknown as living each day without a specific goal or schedule in mind. The structure people find from routines is vital in fighting decision paralysis, where one doesn’t do anything because they do not know what to do. Kelly O’Brien, junior, agrees with this. “Having a routine helps me to be more productive and I don’t feel so lost trying to figure out what to do with my time,” she said.

Health can be greatly affected when there isn’t a solid routine. People without routines may resort to unhealthy choices, physically and mentally, when there is not a clear guideline to how their time should be spent. When bad habits form, a routine helps to solve them by having a set step or good habit to replace it.  According to, “when we create positive life-enhancing habits to replace self-destructive habits, we are getting a double reward – the creation of a positive, new experience plus the possibility of habituating that positive experience.”

Factors of a routine aid stable mental health. Creating a routine helps in setting a goal for life and accomplishing them. By incorporating tasks that help achieve goals into a routine, mental health improves because a goal to look forward to is kept in mind. Mental health also improves when one is able to make time for things that make them happy. Having a solid routine can even reduce stress because it limits decision making.

“Having a routine is beneficial when trying to achieve your goals because if you have set steps everyday to reach them then you are automatically striving to achieve them,” said O’Brien.

photo courtesy of Abby Park