How To Setup Your Day For Success
Go-Getters Prioritize Their Day
Chances are pretty high that you follow a widespread daily routine consistently. For example, most people complete tasks every morning before work, at work, and when they get home.
Usually, not much thought goes into this daily routine; instead, it is something you build up over time naturally. However, if you want to become successful, you should be itemizing your day so that you know exactly what you have to do and when you need to do it.
Every day there are things that you need to do, but those tasks can change slightly depending on what you have going on in your life. There are constants, like when you go to work and shower, but there are also things that can change up -like going to the store, having an important meeting with someone, and so on.
To promptly accomplish everything you need to do in a day, you should have a strategically made to-do list with all your priorities in order. For example, there are certain things that you need to do in the morning, like waking up on time, getting ready, and getting dressed.
Those, of course, will come first. From there, you should make breakfast and eat before heading out to work. But, of course, things change past this point for everyone.
Every night, you should list everything you need to do the next day and when to be efficient and get things done reliably. But, of course, when you make such a list, you want to focus on your priorities.
The more critical the task, the earlier you should get it done. Some jobs can only be tackled at a particular time, but tackle those important ones as soon as possible. The faster you get it out of the way, the more time you can spend on things that arenít as crucial, so you wonít be rushed the rest of the day, and you can rest assured that you got things done.
Many people tend to go for easier things and worry about the hard stuff later. This, in all honesty, is a horrible practice that rarely results in good things.
The 5-Step Plan Which Will Help You Set Up the Perfect Morning Routine
What is the one thing you can do to improve your life significantly? You begin by starting your day off with a morning routine.
A morning routine puts intentionality in your day. It gives your morning form, design, and function. Imagine yourself traveling through each step, calm, cool, and collected. You know exactly what’s needed of you and when. There are no surprises to leave you scrambling. Nor are you likely to forget what’s important.
Take heart if it seems intimidating to form a routine to do all these things. But, really only five steps you need to worry about to make your day come off without a hitch.
1. Why Do This?
Embarking on a new routine is hard work, primarily as you build this routine into something that will be habitual. It’s easy to return to the old ways you’ve always done things, especially if you feel tired or discouraged.
This is why your first step involves understanding your purpose. Know why you’re striving to have a better morning, and speak these words out loud every morning when you first get up to remind yourself of them. Are you looking for higher productivity? A calmer day? More confidence? You’ll need to figure it out if you don’t know before beginning.
2. Implement Your Routine in Baby Steps
You can’t change your entire sleep schedule or make profound changes to your mornings all at once without burning out quickly. This is why it’s essential to work out a plan in advance where you know what changes you are making and when. For example, if you usually get up at 9:00 am but want to get up at 7:00, you’ll want to make small changes that work toward your goal. So for the first week, you might get up at 8:45, the week after 8:30, etc…
3. Commit to Consistency
You won’t succeed in building new habits if you don’t do the same thing repeatedly. Realize you can’t do this in half measures. Commit to doing this routine every single day.
4. Work Out an Evening Routine
Your morning will improve if you use it with an evening routine that sets up a regular bedtime. You can also use evenings to do prep work for the next day, such as laying out your clothes.
5. Create Your Routine
The key to making your routine is to address all of your needs. So some things you might do for physical health (exercise, eat right) while others benefit you spiritually (meditate, pray), mentally (learn, self-talk), or emotionally (journal, affirmations). The goal is to bring yourself into harmonious balance every day.
Together these five steps will help you create the perfect morning routine. So now you’re ready to start your day out right!
Go Getters Stay in Charge of Their Schedule, and Don’t Let It Take Charge of Them
A common problem many face is difficulty saying no to people and ending up with such a crowded schedule that they cannot get everything done when needed.
To be successful, you need to manage your time appropriately and not overbook yourself so much that you end up without any personal time to work on things you want to do.
A crowded schedule can be an incredible hassle. It can lead to so many problems, both personally and with others. On the personal side, it can cause you to get stressed out, be frustrated, and leave you without enough time to keep working on your success.
With others, you have to disappoint and upset people when you cannot put in total effort. You also have to cancel on some people if their times overlap, leading to someone getting upset.
To avoid this, you need to be organized. For example, whenever you are making plans with someone, you need to have everything on one calendar or schedule that you can check on to ensure that you are not putting too much on one day or overlapping it with something else.
You also need to understand what you can accomplish on a given day. Everyone works at a different pace, and you canít constantly compare yourself to someone who might be more efficient than you.
Sometimes it is just a matter of you being naturally slower at work, so if you cram your day full of things to do, you will get less done and burn out faster.
One of the most important things for you to do to avoid a crowded schedule is to be able to communicate and say no when you need to. For example, if you have two things on the same day that conflict, you must see if one can be rescheduled due to prior commitments.
More often than not, people are OK with you rescheduling a bit. However, saying no is also an essential skill to learn. As simple as it may seem, it is tough for some people.
You might not want to let someone down, so you say yes to anyone, but that is more detrimental for you than for anyone else. Don’t be afraid to tell someone you canít help them with something if you genuinely have other things to focus on.
Top Performers Eliminate Distractions and Set the Tone for Success
Since most work is done on or around computers, getting distracted can be pretty straightforward. In addition, since you are working from a computer, you can access social media, videos, shows, and movies from the same system.
This means that it’s straightforward and tempting to drift away from your work and spend a lot more time on the Internet. However, successful people have found ways to eliminate these distractions to be more productive, which helps them significantly.
These distractions are hazardous to your success because they are so easy to access. For example, let’s say you are working on sending emails through your web browser.
In the blink of an eye, you can open a new tab and pull up Facebook or Twitter, and before you know it, you could spend 30 minutes or more just scrolling through social media, wasting time that you couldíve been using to work.
Using social media and the Internet for fun is OK, but you must separate from work. There are different ways of going about separating your work and entertainment.
One might work much better, so try multiple solutions and choose the best. If you are unhappy with any solution you find, you might have to devise a plan to keep away from distractions online.
One solution is to use screen time restrictions typically meant for kids. Sometimes it’s built into your computer, but you might have to download a 3rd party application other times.
Spending too much time on them blocks out specific programs or websites, making you more focused and keen on working. Another helpful solution is to go off of a rewards system in a way.
You can set yourself timers so that for every 30 minutes to an hour of work, you can have 5-10 minutes of entertainment and distractions. This allows you to do work and enjoy yourself while still getting things done in a reasonable amount of time.
Finally, you might want separate devices for work and entertainment. Use a laptop or tablet for your entertainment, but keep a desktop that you strictly do work off of. Sometimes if you do both from the same device, you can have this sense of association where you used to play around on the same thing you used to work on.
