Are Habits the Missing Piece in Your Productivity Puzzle?

by Lori Vande Krol | Sep 11, 2025 | General Productivity, Goals and Priorities, Habits, Planning, Time Management, Tools

Do you ever feel like you’re spinning your wheels—busy all day but never quite moving forward? Many of my clients come to me for exactly that reason: they’re craving structure in their personal and work lives that feels supportive but not stifling, and they don’t know where to start. The key is to create a schedule built from habits and routines that support your priorities. It sounds simple, but creating your ideal schedule takes more intention than you might think.

First, Get Clear on Your Priorities

Whenever I begin work with a client, we spend time defining or reviewing their Mission, Vision, and Goals – the first 3 steps in the ProAction Process™.  Without this, it is difficult to know which habits and routines will move you towards happiness and success. Once the priorities are clear, and we have a basis for what’s most important, we can then dive into the fun stuff – creating the structured schedule. And, the first action towards determining an ideal, supportive schedule is to define habits and routines.

Define Your Habits

Think of habits as the puzzle pieces towards reaching your goals and creating your vision. Once you are clear on your priorities, these puzzle pieces will fall into place. You can then more easily define which habits you want to cultivate—and how often you want them to show up—then you can stack them into daily routines and weekly rhythms that feel natural. Before you know it, your vision will start to form. Without that clarity, plans and schedules can end up overcomplicated, overwhelming, or unsustainable.

The Habits Frequency Framework

To help my clients get clear on their habits, I use a simple framework. It breaks habits down into four categories based on frequency:

• Daily – the habits you want to anchor your day with (e.g., journaling, exercise, reading)
• Weekly – the habits that keep work and life on track but don’t need daily attention (e.g., team check-ins, sales calls, meal planning, phone call to Mom)
• Monthly – the habits that add intentionality and prevent things from piling up (e.g., filing/scanning, reviewing goals, networking events, date night)
• Annually – the habits that create traditions, resets, and big-picture reflection (e.g., yearly retreat, tax prep, mission and vision refresh, holiday party)

This frequency-based approach makes habits feel less like a mountain to climb and more like the puzzle pieces you can place where they fit best.

I recently worked with a client, Lilly, who was overwhelmed with work and life. She was working nights and weekends just to keep up, barely seeing her family, and she never felt like she could get ahead and look forward. After clarifying Lilly’s priorities, we determined that she was trying to do too many things. She pared back her focus and built habits and routines to support her current, highest priority goals. By defining a habit to review and reset her goals (quarterly and annually), Lilly became more comfortable letting other projects and tasks wait.

Her shorter-term habits (daily, weekly, monthly) were then focused on actions that supported her more immediate goals and priorities…like attending 2 events per month that targeted a specific client-base, blocking time each week to finish her e-book, setting aside time on Sundays to meal plan, scheduling a family outing once per month, and getting to bed earlier every day.

Click below to grab the simple, fillable template I use with clients to map habits by frequency—it’s the perfect first step to designing your own ideal schedule.

Build Your Routines and Schedule Them

Once your habit list feels right, it’s time to build routines and schedule them. Daily habits shape your beginning of day and end of day flows. Weekly ones find their home on specific days. Monthly habits might get anchored to a certain date each month. Annual habits can be tied to seasons, months, or meaningful dates.

Once Lilly blocked time for her defined habits and routines, she could more clearly see what her ideal week looked like. She could structure her schedule in a way that allowed her to focus on her current priorities and meet her goal of no-work evenings and weekends. As she developed these habits and worked more intentionally, she felt more accomplished each week – even though she was working less hours.

When your habits are placed with intention and support your mission, vision, and goals, your routines will feel less like rigid rules and more like a supportive rhythm that carries you forward.

Final Thought

Remember: structure doesn’t create habits—habits create structure. Get clear on your priorities, and let your habits build the structure that supports your most productive (and enjoyable) life. So, grab the template and begin mapping out your habits today—your future self will thank you.