The Routine Canvas

10 min readJul 12, 2020

For the last couple of years I have been working on a personal project/venture called Lyfe Design — a very broad reaching framework that helps use the principles of design to help better understand, plan and run our lives. The Lyfe Design project is getting ever closer to being launched fully, but in this post, I wanted to share one of the newest and simplest canvas tools I have produced for the toolkit.

The Routine Canvas is a tool that I created to bridge the gap from a regular calendar/schedule and a task list. When trying to plan, I wanted to be able to see the day, week and month ahead at the same time, rather than have to choose which view to use. I needed something with a balance of detail and a holistic perspective, so I could plan, track and pivot with more effectiveness.

Right-click to open in a new tab and then save it for a better view.

The urgency of this canvas has come from the start of the summer holidays for my kids. Like many families, we are not intending to travel this summer and so we have a long time to keep our three kids entertained on a daily basis, whilst I continue to work from home. This absolutely is a challenge at the best of times, but with the combination of extended periods of time at home due to Covid-19, plus the heat in Dubai restricting our ability to be out and about, having some help to structure the day, week and month is definitely welcome.

We have put the Routine Canvas to the test in the Khan household over the last couple of weeks and the results so far have been great. Given that we are still at the early part of the long summer, I wanted others to have the chance to give it a try too — hopefully it helps you, but also if you have feedback to help improve it I would love to hear that.

It’s worth pointing out that the canvas is not limited to a routine planner for kids. It can also be used for teens and adults to give some structure and focus to their time. I’m using it myself too and it has really helped with my priorities and motivation! Many of the principles I describe below, I apply for myself (such as balance across focus topics, reduced screen time and a cadence of things to pre-plan and look forward to).

You can download the blank canvas at the bottom of this page, but above is a partially completed version, which you can use to see how I have used it with my 11 year old son.

The rest of this post will give a description on each of the basic views of the canvas and some tips on how to use them.

Activity Categories

The more you think about all the things you wish for your children to develop their abilities in, the more confusing and even stressful it can become. There is so much we want them to spend time doing on a regular basis, it can be hard to know what we have covered or missed — plus they have their own things they want to do too, which needs to be properly accommodated.

To get started, I created the following buckets to act as a guide:

Physical Activity (Sports, fitness, cycling, skating etc)
Learning & Skills (Music, Cooking, STEM, Academia, Arts etc)
Games & Screen Time (TV, iPad, Consoles, YouTube, Social Media etc)
Kids being Kids (playing with others, exploring, board games etc)

Each of these categories could be re-worded, but for me it covered the bases quite comprehensively. But to give more confidence and detail, we can deep-dive into each to start listing out specific activities and even sub-groups. Equally, do let me know what might have been missed completely!

In the notes panel on the canvas, I have listed sub-groups that make sense to me and also the kids, along with the types of activities that are covered. It’s not an exact list and things can be added/removed fluidly, but it helps to act as a reference from the main day/week schedule as to what that time can be spent doing.

I’ve also introduced a basic colour-coding system; with black text being things the kids don’t need to ask for permission, whereas Blue needs some parental guidance and approval. A good example is TV Guide — so watching sports and documentaries is ok, but other entertainment shows need to be approved based on the general behaviour and attitude of the day so far. This transparency helps to give some awareness and incentive to gain more freedoms.

THE DAY VIEW

In this area, we have a line for each hour of the day. I’ve set this up to start at 07:00am as my kids wake up early. Actually they are often up even before that, but by 7am they already need some guidance to help get the day started off well.

There is also a grid for each day of the week (Starting Sunday in UAE, but you can change to a Monday start if that suits your time zone). This is used to add in a Tick or Cross based on whether the focus for that hour was completed to an acceptable level. It’s worth saying here that none of this is intended to be minute-perfect science, but rather a guide to say whether the child has at least put in the time, energy and focus towards the requested area. For example, if during project time they didn’t spend the full hour, they can still gain the Tick if they did a solid 20–40 mins — the rest of the time may just be fluid kids being kids and that is of course expected.

Although screen time is limited anyway through the day (to whatever level you feel is suitable for your child/family), I also felt it was important to mark a clear cut-off time for using screens — marked by a clear Red line that is not to be broken! In our case, this is set this as 6pm, so that whatever they do into the evening it’s without blue-light and helps them to wind down for the night. Also, here in Dubai, the weather over the summer is extremely hot and so time outside during the day is very very hard to do. So this is another reason I have an active sports time from 6–7pm — as this gives time to burn off energy from the day, fully disengage from screens and get their mind and body into a good state for bedtime.

Finally, my kids have always been good readers at bedtime and even as they have gotten older, this is a way for them to stay up that little bit longer — it’s ok to read until even 9pm during the holidays, but not staying up for other reasons. This gives them privacy as well as some control of how and when to end the day.

Exceptions

Sometimes kids will have play days with friends that take out a morning, afternoon, a whole day or even a sleepover. Again, this canvas isn’t always about tracking hour by hour, but broadly speaking the expectation is that if they have a half-day lost with a play day, they should either pick up from the other half, or at the parents discretion, do some catch-up sessions (such as project time).

The same applies for trips out. Going out to the malls, museums, parks, play centres etc will disrupt the schedule, so just adjust accordingly.

THE WEEK VIEW

Every day is not the same, so we need to give shape to the week to reflect reality, create enough variance to stay engaged and also balance activity topics over a period of time.

The first thing I wanted to do is balance out the project time focus, because there are many categories to cover and each need focus and time to make any progress. Equally, kids don’t want to do the same thing over and over again, so project time is intended to be split over multiple time blocks in a day, but changed in topic each day of the week. In the example, I’ve listed the focus project of each day, but depending on what suits you, you can make this more flexible and they can be changed around to suit the mood. Ideally, they cover all topics over the week, but if they want to over-invest in something they are getting passionate about, that’s more than ok.

The next thing I did was add some notes to help mix up the physical activity over the week too. With the limited options for being active in the hot Dubai summer, it’s also important to help let them know that activity is still fun and varied! In our schedule, these sporty activities are most likely going to be done in the early morning or the end of the day, but over a week, they will have kept up the basic skills practice across different sports, so I’m happy they are developing themselves and they are happy that they are not always doing the same thing everyday. Some of these they can do independently and others we do together to make it more fun and family time.

I’ve also marked out the weekends to show that we’ll be spending some time out as a family. If you know in advance what you will be doing (such as going to the cinema, water park etc) you can do that too — giving a visual incentive that the week ahead will result in more fun things if they keep track.

Cheat Day

Probably the most controversial thing we are imposing in our home is a reduction of screen time and clear controls on how screen time is used. During the recent home schooling period, the kids had a lot of extra time on their iPads and computers, so it was important to us that the summer was a period for them to disengage from that more and rediscover the physical world around them. But kids are kids and they should also get to have fun the way they want — especially when they have friends who perhaps get more screen time and freedom to do so.

So I’ve introduced the concept of a cheat day. Similar to that of a gym/diet schedule, if the structure and rules of the week are followed well, there is an incentive to have a day off too. On cheat day, the kids are allowed to use their screen time to do things they are restricted on during the week — watching YouTube videos, playing Xbox and iPad games and even a bit of TikTok. From the very start of the trial period with the kids, the cheat day was a big success and having that incentive has kept more (not perfect) focus in how they get that.

THE MONTH VIEW

My wife keeps a general calendar on the kitchen fridge, so this canvas wasn’t intended to replace that. The idea behind the month view was to pre-plan some of the things the kids get to do as either exceptions or treats.

In our house, movie-night has become a popular past-time and so I’ve marked which movie we will all watch each week, so they have something to look forward to. You’ll see from the example that they have been into their fantasy features recently, so as well as finishing Lord of the Rings, we’ll be burning through the episodes of The Dark Crystal on Netflix together in July.

Other things you can mark per week are when they can do a sleepover, have a day-trip somewhere etc.

As mentioned earlier, this canvas is one of many that form the Lyfe Design project I am working on, but as it was a simple one to use and something that has been very useful to us at the start of the summer holidays, I wanted to share it early in case it was useful to others.

I’d also really like to hear your feedback — especially from actual trial and error when trying to use it.