Your routine should leave room for the ordinary conditions that interrupt it.

Routines usually fail on normal days, not exceptional ones. Colds, late trains and a child awake at two are not emergencies. They are simply what life contains, and a schedule that only works when nothing happens is a schedule that mostly does not work. Building in slack is not laziness but accuracy about the world.

Look at the plan you keep breaking and ask what it assumes. Then take something out, or leave a gap that absorbs the ordinary trouble. A four-day version you actually keep will outlast a seven-day version you abandon by Wednesday.