Okay so real talk: you know that feeling when you look up and realize you haven’t made your bed in two weeks, your morning routine is now just snoozing your alarm four times, and you have twelve tabs open of productivity videos you’re never going to watch? Yeah. Same.
We’ve all been there, and if you’re here because you want to get back into a routine, I need you to know this is a safe space.
Maybe it’s been a few days…or even months and you genuinely don’t remember what your normal even used to look like anymore.
Either way, you’re not broken, and you didn’t ruin anything permanently.
Routines aren’t fragile in the way we treat them, they’re actually way more forgiving than we give them credit for, you just have to know how to step back in instead of trying to sprint back in.
Stick with me here, because by the end of this you’ll have an actual plan, not just more inspiration you’ll forget about by tomorrow.
Falling out of a routine doesn’t mean you failed (although it can feel like that).
It usually just means life happened. A trip, a busy season at work, a heartbreak, a burnout spiral, a random Tuesday where everything just stopped making sense and never quite got put back together.
Whatever it was, you’re here now, which means you’re already doing the hardest part: deciding you want things to feel different.
So let’s talk about how to actually get back into a routine, without the toxic 5am club or you’re lazy energy that’s all over the internet right now.
Why Getting Back Into a Routine Feels So Hard
Before we get into the how, I want to validate the why, because I think this is the part everyone skips.
When you fall out of a routine, your brain isn’t just dealing with logistics. It’s dealing with momentum.
Routines work because they take decisions off your plate. Once you break the chain, every single task suddenly requires a decision again, and decision fatigue is exhausting.
That’s why getting back into it can feel so much harder than starting from scratch ever did.
I’ve fallen off my routine more times than I can count.
Burnout from running this blog and a business, while also working a corporate job will do that to you.
And every time, the thing that got me back wasn’t some dramatic overhaul.
It was a few small, boring, unsexy habits done consistently, the kind of stuff that doesn’t make for a great before and after post but actually works. So that’s what I’m sharing here.
The Most Common Things That Knock People Off Their Routine
Before we jump into fixes, it helps to actually name what threw you off in the first place, because the get back into a routine playbook looks a little different depending on the cause.
Vacation or travel. You spend a week eating whatever, sleeping whenever, and by the time you’re home your body genuinely doesn’t remember what a schedule is. Easing back in after a trip works a lot better than forcing yourself into a rigid 5am wake up on day one.
A busy or stressful season at work. Deadlines take over, self-care gets shoved to the bottom of the list, and by the time things calm down you almost forget what your old routine even looked like.
Sickness. Even a few days of being sick can throw off your sleep schedule, your workouts, your meals, basically everything, and coming back from that requires patience, not punishment.
A breakup or big life change. Sometimes your routine wasn’t broken by chaos, it was broken by grief, and that one takes the longest to rebuild, so go easy on yourself here especially.
Just… burnout. Sometimes there’s no big dramatic reason. You were just burnt out, and your routine quietly slipped away without you noticing until it was fully gone.
A change in season. This one gets overlooked a lot, but shorter days, colder weather, or even just the shift from a summer routine to a fall schedule can throw your whole rhythm off without any single big event causing it.
Whatever your reason was, it’s not a character flaw. It’s just data. And now we get to use that data to actually build something that sticks.
Step 1: Stop Trying to Fix Everything At Once (This Is How You Get Back Into a Routine Faster)
This is the number one mistake I see (and the number one mistake I make every single time I try to reset my life out of nowhere). You skip one workout, and suddenly you’re planning a full life overhaul that includes waking up at 5am, meal prepping every meal, journaling, cold plunging, and reading 40 books this year.
That plan lasts about 36 hours before you burn out again and end up right back where you started, except now you also feel like a failure.
Instead, pick one thing. JUST ONE!!. Maybe it’s making your bed every morning, or drinking a glass of water before coffee.
If you’re trying to figure out how to get back into a routine without burning out again, small, stress-free wins build way more momentum than an ambitious plan you can’t sustain.
A good rule of thumb: if your plan to get back into a routine has more than two or three new habits in it, it’s probably too big. Cut it down.
You can always add more once the first habit actually feels automatic, which usually takes a couple of weeks, not a couple of days.
Step 2: Anchor Your Day Around One Non-Negotiable to Get Back Into a Routine
Once you’ve picked your one small habit, anchor it to something that already happens every day, like brushing your teeth or making coffee.
This is called habit stacking and it genuinely works because you’re not relying on willpower or motivation (which, let’s be honest, is not reliable at 6:45am on a Monday).
For me, my anchor has always been my morning routine, because how you start the day tends to set the tone for everything after it.
Even back when I was juggling a 9-5 and running this blog on 5am mornings, it wasn’t the wake up time that mattered, it was the fact that I did the same small thing every single day.
You do not need to wake up at 5am for this to work. Your anchor could be a 7am alarm and ten quiet minutes with your coffee before you touch your phone. The time isn’t the point. The consistency is.
Not Sure Where to Start? Rebuild Your Morning Before Your Evening
If you’re staring down your whole day wondering where to even begin, start with mornings.
Here’s why: a good morning routine tends to have a ripple effect on the rest of your day, while a good evening routine only really pays off the next morning.
When you’re trying to get back into a routine from scratch, you want the habit that gives you the fastest feedback loop, and mornings just deliver that better.
This doesn’t mean your evening routine doesn’t matter, IT ABSOLUTELY DOES, especially for sleep.
But if you’re overwhelmed and can only focus on rebuilding one part of your day right now, mornings are where I’d put your energy first.
That said, mornings don’t have to mean a full skincare and makeup situation either. Some days it’s genuinely just splashing water on your face, doing a five minute beauty routine, and calling it good, and that’s completely fine.
It’s more about feeling put together than doing all the steps.
Step 3: Time Block Your Day (Even Loosely)
Here’s the thing nobody tells you about how to get back into a routine: it’s not really about motivation, it’s about structure.
When your day has zero structure, your brain has to make a million tiny decisions, and that’s when everything falls apart.
This is genuinely why I ended up building a time block planner for myself in the first place, I needed something that would tell my brain what to focus on and when, instead of me trying to hold my whole day in my head and inevitably forgetting half of it.
You don’t need to schedule every single minute (please don’t, that’s a fast track to burnout), but blocking out rough chunks like “morning routine,” “deep work,” “movement,” and “wind down” gives your day a shape again.
And having shape is honestly 80% of the battle when you’re trying to rebuild consistency.
If you’re someone who thrives with a visual system in front of you rather than just a mental checklist, keeping a simple dashboard planner on your desk can make a bigger difference than you’d expect.
Step 4: Do a Weekly Reset (Don’t Skip This Part)
Okay, this one might be my most controversial routine opinion, but I genuinely think most people struggle to get back into a routine and stay there not because of their mornings, but because they never reset at the end of the week.
Think about it. You finally get into a groove on Tuesday, Wednesday feels good, and then the weekend hits, everything gets thrown off, and Monday you’re starting from zero again.
A weekly reset breaks that cycle. It’s basically a check-in with yourself where you tidy up loose ends, plan the week ahead, and set yourself up so Monday doesn’t feel like a punch to the face.
Having a checklist that walks you through exactly what to clean, plan, and prep makes this so much less overwhelming, since you’re not starting from a blank page every single week.
And if you want to zoom out even further, pairing your weekly reset with a few extra habits at the start of each month tends to make the whole system even more sustainable.
A weekly reset doesn’t need to take hours either. Mine usually takes about 30 to 45 minutes on a Sunday, and it covers the basics: a quick glance at my calendar for the week ahead, a load of laundry, meal planning so I’m not decision-fatigued every night at 6pm, and tidying whatever surfaces got cluttered over the weekend.
It’s not glamorous. It’s just the thing that keeps Monday from feeling like a small emergency every single week.
Step 5: Lower the Bar for “Getting Ready” (An Underrated Way to Get Back Into a Routine)
A weirdly underrated part of trying to get back into a routine is just feeling a little more put together. Not in a “you need a ten step skincare routine” way, but in a “I feel like a person again” way.
When I’m in a funk, even just running through a five minute version of my normal beauty routine makes me feel like I’m showing up for myself, which then bleeds into the rest of my day in a genuinely surprising way.
Same goes for your space. You don’t need to deep clean your entire apartment, but making your bed, clearing your nightstand, or wiping down your bathroom counter can do more for your mental reset than people give it credit for.
Step 6: Track Your Wins Without Turning It Into Another Chore
This one is important and kind of counterintuitive.
When you’re trying to get back into a routine, it’s really tempting to track everything, every habit, every meal, every minute, because it feels productive.
But an overly complicated tracking system is honestly just another routine you have to keep up with, and that defeats the whole purpose.
Instead, keep it stupid simple. A basic checklist, a few boxes you tick off, or even just a note on your phone works fine. The point isn’t the tracking itself, it’s that feeling of I did the thing that reminds your brain this is working, which makes you way more likely to keep doing it tomorrow.
A weekly reset checklist is honestly the easiest place to fold this in, since checking off what actually got done that week gives you just enough structure to see your progress without turning your routine into a spreadsheet you’ll abandon in a week.
Some people also use a simple habit tracker for this, especially if you like physically crossing things off.
Whatever method you pick, the goal is the same: a quick, low effort way to notice that you’re actually doing better than you think you are.
Step 7: Expect to Fall Off Again (Seriously)
I say this with love… you are going to fall off your routine again at some point.
That’s not pessimism, that’s just being a human with a life that isn’t always predictable. The goal was never to build a perfect, unbreakable routine. The real goal is knowing how to get back into a routine quickly when life throws you off, without the spiral of shame that usually comes with it.
Every time I fall off mine now, I don’t try to fix everything at once anymore.
I just go back to step one. One small habit, anchored to something I already do, with a loose structure around it. That’s it.
That’s genuinely the whole system, and it’s worked more times than I can count.
What Getting Back Into a Routine Actually Looks Like Day to Day
Theory is great, but I think what actually helps most is seeing what this looks like in practice, so here’s a realistic breakdown of the first week, not a perfect one, a realistic one.
Days 1 to 2: You pick your one habit and your one anchor. Don’t touch anything else. If your habit is “make your bed every morning,” your only job for two days is to make your bed. It’ll feel almost too easy, and that’s the point.
Days 3 to 4: This is usually where motivation dips a little, because the novelty wears off and it starts feeling like a normal task instead of a fresh start.
This is exactly why you kept it small. A tiny habit is easy to keep doing even when you don’t feel like it, which is the whole reason it works when bigger plans don’t.
Days 5 to 7: You do your first weekly reset. This is where you look back at the week, notice what worked, and decide if you’re ready to add a second habit or if you need another week with just the first one.
There’s no wrong answer here. Some weeks you’ll be ready to build, other weeks you’ll need to hold steady, and both are fine.
Week 2: If your first habit feels close to automatic, you can layer in your second one, maybe adding your time blocks for work, or a short wind down routine at night.
If it doesn’t feel automatic yet, that’s okay too, just keep going with what you’ve got.
Week 3 and beyond: This is usually when things start to feel less like trying to get back into a routine and more like your routine just being your life again.
It won’t be perfect, and you’ll probably still have off days, but the baseline starts holding itself up without you having to think about it constantly.
Notice that nowhere in this breakdown does it say ‘wake up at 5am on day one’ or ‘have your whole life figured out by Friday.’ That’s on purpose.
The people who actually rebuild a lasting routine aren’t the ones who go hardest in week one, they’re the ones who are still doing the small thing three weeks later. Consistency beats intensity every single time, even when intensity looks a lot more impressive on paper.
A Quick Recap: How to Get Back Into a Routine
If you skimmed straight to the bottom (no shame, I do this too), here’s the short version of how to get back into a routine:
- Pick one small habit instead of overhauling everything
- Anchor it to something you already do daily
- Add loose structure to your day with time blocking
- Do a weekly reset so Mondays stop feeling like a reset button smashed on your face
- Lower the bar for feeling “ready,” even five minutes counts
- Track your wins with something simple, not another complicated system
- Expect to fall off again, and don’t make it a big deal when you do
Getting back into a routine isn’t about becoming a different person overnight, but about giving your future self a slightly easier day, over and over, until it stops feeling like effort and starts feeling like just… how you live.
Some weeks it’ll click fast, other weeks it’ll take a few tries, and both of those are completely normal parts of the process. You’ve got this, and honestly, the fact that you’re even looking this up means you’re already halfway there.
Both my time block planner and my weekly reset checklist came out of my own trial and error with exactly this, after way too many attempts at fixing everything at once that didn’t stick, so if you’d rather not start from a blank page, they’re there to make the whole process a lot less overwhelming.
And if this is you right now, mid-reset, a little overwhelmed, googling things at 11pm, just know that showing up here today already counts as step one.
You don’t need the perfect plan or the perfect Monday to start, you just need one small thing you can actually keep doing. The rest is just building from here, one small habit at a time.
