How to Actually Achieve More in A Day than Most Normally Do in A Week

Achieve 

 

 

Photo by Thomas Bormans on Unsplash

A comprehensive and actionable step-by-step guide

Neeramitra Reddy

Yesterday was one of my most productive days ever.

I wrote 3 articles, segregated my important documents, meditated for 30 minutes, made my monthly investments, caught up with an old friend, banged out an amazing workout, and got to bed early.

My past self wouldn’t have achieved that much in an entire week. In fact, even my present “normal” days put my erstwhile most productive days to shame.

I work a full-time job, write, work out, eat healthily, invest, read, sleep enough, play my guitar, spend time with loved ones, and constantly explore new things.

I neither have a timetable nor insane willpower. What I do have are honed systems, consistent habits, and optimized frameworks — and these are what have revolutionized my productivity.

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” — Paul J. Meyer

Drawing on both my experience and the relevant research, I want to share a comprehensive productivity guide with you. And I hope this improves your productivity by leaps and bounds.

Sleep. Sleep. Sleep

With the rise of the toxic hustle culture, being sleep-deprived has appallingly become something to brag about. Even I used to take sleep for granted.

But two nightmarish bouts of insomnia were enough to propel sleep to the top of my priorities totem-pole — forget being productive. It took my all to barely scrape past my days.

As this paper aptly titled The Extraordinary Importance Of Sleep explains, the effects of sleep deprivation are debilitating — affected cognition, hypertension, memory loss, disrupted hormones, cardiac risk, and obesity to name a few.

Sleep can make or break the next day. While 8 hours of deep sleep makes me feel like an inexhaustible machine, 6 groggy hours leave me barely functional.

Without good sleep, you just cannot be productive. So sleep enough and well. Here are 5 tips to do the same:

• Choose a sleep time based on your preference and convenience. It could be as late as 12 AM or as early as 7 PM. The time doesn’t matter as much as the duration does. The key is to consistently stick to the same timings.
• Get rid of all electronic screens at least an hour before bed. The blue light emitted by electronic screens disrupts sleep by reducing the sleep hormone Melatonin’s production.
• Find a calming activity to do just before bed. Anything that puts you in a serene state of mind will work. Reading a book while lying on my stomach is my go-to.
• Use your bedroom for only these two things. Our brains associate activities with places. And you want your bedroom associated with only sleep and sex. So if you eat, work, chill, and live on your bed, there won’t be any helpful association — this is primarily what caused my insomnia.
• Consider supplementing with Melatonin. This is sort of a last resort and having used Melatonin myself, I can attest to the fact that it works. ZMA is another supplement that might help. But, I’d say consult a doctor or a sleep specialist before trying these.

Ruthlessly prioritize and create these two task-buckets

24 hours isn’t enough to do everything we want to. And that’s exactly what makes ruthless prioritization not only powerful but necessary.

“If there are nine rabbits on the ground, if you want to catch one, just focus on one.” — Jack Ma

On normal days, just before going to sleep, I will decide 3 tasks to accomplish at any cost the next day. And before my “go the extra mile days”, I mentally commit to another 3 tasks.

I like to call these the primary and secondary buckets — the former 3 are to be achieved at any cost while the latter ones only if the primary ones are done.

3 is a sweet number — while with 7 or 20 item To-do lists, you’d be over-committing and scattering your focus, with 2 tasks or lesser, you’d be cutting yourself short.

This 2-bucket system also works better than just having a 6-task To-do list because of the additional layer of prioritization and the escape clause — you have to worry about your secondary bucket only once you’re done with the primary one.

So before you go to bed, choose your 6 tasks and segregate them into your two buckets.

Chisel them down to the finest level of detail

Vague tasks are sneaky fellows — they can mean nothing and everything at the same time.

You can interpret them in a zillion ways. A 10-minute brisk walking session is as much of a “Workout” as a 2-hour strength training session is. And “Writing”? A 2-minute tweet or a 2-hour long-form batch writing session?

Steer away from all and any generality. Chisel down the tasks in your bucket until they’re specific enough to make it impossible to interpret them in more than one way.

A simple technique is to satisfy the “5W1H,” or the “Why-What-Where-When-Who-How,”—the output will be specific tasks such as “Write a 800–1000 word productivity article first thing after waking up,” or “Complete a low-rep and lat focused pull-workout before lunch”

Cultivate task-specific rituals

It takes using rituals to understand just how powerful they can be.

A ritual, in simple terms, is a unique series of actions that precede, signify, and prepare you for a certain task. The unique part is crucial — you cannot use the same ritual for two different tasks.

This is because rituals work by forming mental associations. And this is a lock and key mechanism — the same key won’t work for different locks. So forge different keys.

You can make them as quirky as you fancy — Squeezing and tugging a hanky while listening to thrash metal and visualizing gore is my ritual before I try to set new personal records during strength training.

Also, the benefits of rituals won’t kick in immediately — as a form of classical conditioning, your brain needs time and repetition to fully associate the task with its ritual.

So form and stick to rituals. Unleash your creative brain, think about the activities that already “prime” you for certain tasks, and play around.

“The key to forming good habits is to make them part of your ‘rituals.’ I have a morning ritual, afternoon ritual, and Sunday ritual. It’s one way to bundle good habits into regular times that you set aside to prepare yourself for the life you want. Rituals help you form habits.” — Lewis Howes

Render it impossible to be distracted

Focus is the center stone of productivity, and nothing kills focus as much as distractions do.

Be it an Instagram notification flashing on your phone or your mother loudly bellowing at your sibling, it’s hard to consciously avoid giving in to distractions.

So, choose the easier way — eliminate all sources of distractions beforehand. Here are 4 ways to do just that and create a focus-rich environment:

• Turn off all notifications. The effect of this is honestly miraculous. Unless the task at hand relies on them, turn off all notifications — PC, phone, Instagram, email, everything. I would say do this for life, but if you don’t want to, at least do it before working.
• Find a calm and isolated environment. And let your friends, coworkers, or family know that you don’t want to be disturbed unless there’s an actual emergency. Next to the window in my room is my go-to place. I latch my door as well.
• Put on a pair of headphones and play the same song on repeat. While music can help drown out other noises, the songs themselves can become distractions. Therefore — loop the same song. This will take your focus off the music. The one I use is Loving You by Eric Prydz.
• Use blocking software and apps. Finding ColdTurkey writer has been a boon for me — until you meet the set word or time goal, your computer’s turned into a typewriter. For general use-cases, there’s a ColdTurkey blocker. The best part is that you don’t have to use blocking software forever. After a while, you become “trained” enough to work without them.

Alternate short bursts of deep work with pockets of leisure

With refreshing sleep, tasks decided and chiseled down to the sharpest detail, powerful rituals set up, and distractions eliminated, all that’s left is firing the gun.

With laser-sharp focus and a peak-state mind, you’ll now be able to tap into flow and perform deep work — which studies have reported to be up to 5 times as productive as normal work is!

But given the nature of deep work — mind pushed to its cognitive limits and your focus straightened into the thinnest strand, long stretches can burn you out and prove counterproductive.

A 5-hour writing session after which I scrapped everything I wrote after the 2-hour mark taught me this the hard way. This is where leisure comes in.

If sleep is the first thing toxic productivists hate, leisure is the second one. And funnily, both are instrumental to productivity. Leisure replenishes everything deep work consumes— focus, mood, motivation, and mental energy.

And when you marry deep work with leisure, the child you beget is the epitome of productivity. A rule of thumb I have is — for every hour of deep work, have at least 10 minutes of leisure. Naval Ravikant summarized this best when he said,

“Forty-hour workweeks are a relic of the Industrial Age. Knowledge workers function like athletes — train and sprint, then rest and reassess.”

Here’s how I typically weave them together. During a batch writing session, once I’m done with my first article, I leisurely eat my pre-workout meal while reading a novel. Then, I jump right back in, and once the second’s also done, I sit back and sip my black coffee while watching workout compilations.

Then, I dive right into working out. The subsequent break is a lazy steamy shower. Then, some editing. A phone call to a friend would be the break. And so on.

With this, it’s the best of both worlds — neither does work feel like work nor does leisure feel like a waste of time.

Final thoughts

Well, there you go — no stringent timetables, no insane to-do lists, no stoic willpower required. Just pure productivity.

Implement this correctly and you will definitely be able to achieve more in a day than most do in a week. Also, think of this as just a starting point — as you discover tricks, tweaks, and optimizations, evolve and strengthen this.

People, after all, are as different as they come. And just like there isn’t a one-size-fits-all attire, there is no universal plug-and-play productivity guide.

Try this out, enjoy the insane productivity boost, stick to it, then tweak and optimize as you see fit. As one of my favorite quotes goes,

“Absorb what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own.” — Bruce Lee

This Ancient Habit Will Maximize Your Focus

Focus 

 

 

 Photo by Michal Vrba on Unsplash

Our thoughts are often so cluttered by worry and fear that we lose focus, having a mantra can help you get it back.

Darius Foroux

 

Ever since I was little, I worried about many things. My favorite topics were money, health, and my future. What’s your favorite topic to worry about?

And don’t tell me you never worry or fear nothing. Because if you have zero fear, that means you’re a robot!

Everyone spends time thinking about things that will never happen. Because that’s what fear is. Michel de Montaigne, the 16th-century philosopher, said it best:

“My life has been full of terrible misfortunes most of which never happened.”

We all know that fear is meant to save us from trouble. But in the modern world, that’s simply not true anymore. These days, fear is only something that occupies your mind.

Our thoughts are so cluttered with fear, worry, and stress, that we can’t focus on our goals. In my personal experience, living a full life has nothing to do with the resources or opportunities you have.

It’s about knowing what you want, and also knowing how you can get it. That’s why you need to be focused every day. Without work, no goal will ever be achieved.

That’s why I want to share one ancient habit that stood the test of time. This habit has proved itself over and over again.

The Power Of Having A Mantra

I’m not a spiritual person. I believe in coincidence and luck. I also don’t believe in some kind of spiritual energy that we can’t see.

I’m a pretty skeptical person. But I’m also a pragmatist. I believe in what works. That’s why I never challenge religion or spirituality because it works for millions of people.

In fact, I study religion, cultures, and different beliefs that people have. And one thing that I’ve learned from religion is how useful a Mantra is.

Most of us have heard about it, but few of us have one or, let alone, actively practice it.

What is a Mantra, anyway? A good definition I found online is this:

“A “mantra” is a sacred utterance, a numinous sound, a syllable, word or phonemes, or group of words in Sanskrit believed by practitioners to have psychological and spiritual powers.”

Mantras exist (in some shape or form) for centuries. You can find them in Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Christianity. I’ve learned that people from all over the world use a Mantra to overcome fear and improve their focus.

It doesn’t matter who came up with it first. What matters is that it works.

My favorite example of someone who applies it is Floyd Mayweather.

Yes. The boxer. Mayweather might be a controversial figure that people either love or hate. But he’s also considered as the best boxer of all time. Not one of the best. Thé best. He has a record of 50–0. And he never even came close to losing.

His recipe for success? A lot of talent, that’s for sure. But, the man also has a crazy work ethic. And he’s been training ever since he was a baby.

I’ve been following him for years. I don’t care about his cars or money. I watch his training videos to see whether I can learn something that I can apply to my own life. A person with those kinds of results must do things right. You can’t deny that.

A few years ago, I noticed something that seemed like a promotion technique at first. Mayweather often repeated the same phrase:

“Hard work. Dedication.”

It sounds like a lame company slogan. He says that while he works on the heavy bag, speedball, pads, and even while he’s running. Constantly, he repeats the same words. Sometimes in a different order.

And it wasn’t until I learned about Mayweather’s Mantra, that I started using my own. I always thought it was something that yoga hipsters use to become “Zen.”

Do you see me sitting on the floor with crossed legs and saying: “Hmmmn. Hmmmn. Hmmmmn”?

“Let’s go!”

That’s my mantra. I’ve trained myself to say it every morning when I wake up. It really energizes me.

I wake up and immediately say, “Let’s go!”

I’ve experimented with different Mantras. In particular, ones that you repeat more often. But I’ve found that it’s not my thing.

I’m a pretty direct and no B.S. person. I prefer something short and powerful.

Not only do I say it when I wake up, I also say it before I start working. Or, when I want to start my workout. “Let’s go!”

Give it a try. It works really well for me because it changes my state of mind to action. Especially when I feel afraid or powerless in life, I try to force a change in state.

You know that platitude, “The only way out is through?” I believe that’s true. And if you want to get through things, you need action.

After you start using your Mantra, you get in a worry-free zone.

This is one of the most effective things I’ve found in all of personal growth.

I highly recommend a Mantra for everyone. All you need to do is pick a slogan that helps you to get focused, and that changes your state. Give it a try now.

“But I don’t believe it!”

Pessimists say: “Just saying three words won’t help you with real problems.” To those people I say: What will help? Drowning in your own misery? Being paralyzed? Never taking action? Complaining? Feeling bitter about life?

Never. We all know that life’s too short to spend worrying about things that will never happen. And if something bad does happen to you, do something about it.

Let’s go!

How was it? Save stories you love and never lose them.

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This post originally appeared on Darius Foroux and was published December 1, 2017. This article is republished here with permission.

Darius Foroux writes about productivity, habits, decision making, and personal finance.

 

 

How to be resilient: This practical guide to dealing with setbacks is essential reading

Resilience 

 

 Ensure you're making practical self-care steps to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the 'new normal'.

 

Photo by David Wirzba on Unsplash

Life might be getting back to normal but many of us are still feeling the effect of the pandemic on our mental health. In fact, you might not even realise the full impact the past year has had on your mental health until you're back in 'the real world'. Indeed, recent ONS figures show cases of depression are on the rise despite lockdown lifting. From the period of 27th January to 7th March 2021, around 1 in 5 (21%) adults in the UK experienced some form of depression, an increase since November 2020 (when the figure stood at 19%) and more than double that observed before the Coronavirus pandemic (10%).

That's why it's so important to take heed of your own mental health and ensure you're making practical self-care steps to avoid becoming overwhelmed by the 'new normal'.

"Mental health is a huge part of all of our lives and for too many of us it’s a mystery, but if we understand our minds we can put ourselves in control so we can really live," says Daniel Howell, a mental health activist and author of You Will Get Through This Night. 

Inspired by Dan’s own mental health journey shared with millions of his fans on stage and screen, along with his work as an ambassador for mental health charity Young Minds, his new book promises to be a practical guide to understanding and taking control of your mental health, written in an entertaining and personal way from someone who has been through it all.

Written in consultation with psychologist Dr. Heather Bolton and spilt over three sections; This Night, Tomorrow and The Day After, the book provides a refreshing, realistic approach to looking after your mental wellbeing the way we all experience it - whether you are in a crisis, just looking to make a change or want to know how to look after yourself every day.

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One key aspect of his book is how to be resilient and deal with setbacks, which we are adamant will prove extremely useful for anyone struggling as we come out of lockdown....

'Stiff thinking' could be making us unhappy, so here's how to adopt a more flexible way of thinking to free your mind and ease anxiety

Mental Health

'Stiff thinking' could be making us unhappy, so here's how to adopt a more flexible way of thinking to free your mind and ease anxiety

"We all know that life can throw a curveball when we least expect it, so it’s important to know how to cope with these surprises, and not let them throw you off your positive momentum.

Life is a rollercoaster, or more like the graph shape of a llama rolling down a hill and climbing up again. We can’t predict the chaos. Despite our best efforts and intentions, it’s normal to have ups and downs. Remember that mental health is not a straight line, we can do what we can to raise the floor level, but it will always wave with the happenings of the world.

It doesn’t have to be a sudden shocking event, such as a… lightning strike! (sorry?) Life is naturally full of moments of change that we need to be able to handle. Breakups, moving, changing jobs – things that are very common can throw us off our track and we should all know how to keep ourselves on the rails.

• 
  

Resilience

Training your resilience can help you to keep going in the face of adversity. It’s more than just bouncing back, it’s the act of moving forward as we grow from our experiences. Being resilient can look like:

• Viewing challenges as opportunities
• Focusing on the things you can control
• Adapting your response to challenging situations
• Maintaining a sense of purpose and drive
• Asking for support when needed

Training your resilience can help you to keep going in the face of adversity.

Resilience is about being realistically optimistic. It’s not wishful thinking, it’s just being aware of what you can actually achieve and allowing yourself to be hopeful that you will succeed. Don’t be cynical about your own abilities, planting a seed of doubt that can self-sabotage. If you second guess yourself, it could be a self- fulfilling prophecy. Be realistic, but be fair to yourself and go into situations wanting to win!

It’s not something that’s fixed, it fluctuates through life and is something we can develop. It’s partly about our mindset, but also about how we respond in the face of stressful situations.

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Generation Impatient: Have we lost the art of conversation and forgotten how to be in the present?

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Most importantly, it’s not about pushing through the pain, telling yourself you’re being brave (don’t hide the pain, Harold), it’s about honestly accepting what you can handle and being practical.

Don’t overwork or exhaust yourself; it’s unrealistic to expect to cope with literally everything all the time!

Think about the attitude you have when you approach situations. Let’s imagine two different people being rejected after a particularly awkward first date:

They both have similar first thoughts: ‘Well that’s disappointing’ and ‘will I ever love again?’

But then how they make sense of that situation is different:
– Akachi starts to accept that not everyone will love her, their date wasn’t right for her anyway, and decides to take control by getting back out there and finding another fish in the sea.

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– Fernando doesn’t accept it, but gets stuck on the idea that they’ll always be rejected, they’ll never meet anyone and be lonely forever to live as a spectre haunting the local lighthouse.

Both people are in the same situation but approach it with very different attitudes, which affects how they respond. To build up your own resilience to setbacks, it’s important to understand ‘adaptive coping’ (see opposite).

Self-care service station

During stressful and challenging times, self-care is essential to maintain your overall resilience, so don’t forget the basics – eating, sleep and hygiene, and staying hydrated.

It may sound simple, but if you let these slip it can chip away at your hard work and your mindset.

Try to keep your positive routine and stay on top of necessary stuff – having routine and structure gives you a strong foundation for coping.
Take time for yourself – literally remember to breathe, be mindful if you need a moment and take time to do things you enjoy to recover.

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Reading the signals right

Psychological theory says we tend to see stressful situations in one of three broad ways: a challenge, a threat, or a loss.

Seeing it as a challenge → having hope, a fighting spirit and putting energy into finding a solution.

Seeing it as a threat → assuming the worst, feeling anxious and deflated.

Seeing it as a loss → acting like the damage has already been done, there’s nothing you can do, and feeling helpless. 

 Try to look for aspects of your situation that you can see as a challenge to overcome – this will help you adopt a positive approach and channel your energy into solving the problem, known as adaptive coping. Of course, this might not always be possible and you can’t keep fighting forever, but there will always be an opportunity for learning from the situation.
Feeling threatened is absolutely normal, but try to notice whether you’re getting caught up with catastrophic thinking. Break the problem down and focus on what you can control, even if it’s a small piece of the 10,000 piece 1-colour jigsaw.

If you’re feeling helpless because of things you’ve lost, allow yourself to feel that – resilience involves connecting honestly with feelings, not shutting them off. It’s a healthy part of processing what’s going on for you. The key is balance.

• Channel your energy into what you can change.
• Evaluate any aspects bringing up anxiety.
• Allow time to deal with your feelings.
• Being flexible between these three approaches will help you deal with the fun of life’s many suddenly surprising challenges."

You Will Get Through This Night by Daniel Howell is available now in hardback, eBook and audio download (HQ)

• Mental Health
• Health
• Lifestyle

• 
  

This is How to be Less Distracted By Having Fun in Tedious Tasks

Distraction 

 

 

 Photo by Chrales Deluvio

 

From comic books and radio programs to TV shows and Atari games, the world has always been full of things that distract us. Today, most of us blame our phones or, more specifically, social media, Words with Friends, or Netflix as the reason we can’t get anything done.

Yet these aren’t the real culprits. Instead, our distraction is usually driven by our desire to escape discomfort, including boredom, fear, and anxiety — or tasks in our work calendar that don’t sync with how we value our time (see How to Get the Most out of your Calendar). When you binge on The Office rather than doing your taxes, watching Michael, Pam, and Dwight is your (understandable) way of avoiding an activity you deem to be a tedious task. The secret to staying focused at times like these is not to abstain from The Office — you’ll just find another distraction — but to change your perspective on the task itself.

Ian Bogost studies fun for a living. A professor of interactive computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Bogost has written 10 books, including quirky titles like How to Talk About Videogames, The Geek’s Chihuahua, and, most recently at the time of this writing, Play Anything. In the latter book, Bogost makes several bold claims that challenge how we think about fun and play. “Fun,” he writes, “turns out to be fun even if it doesn’t involve much (or any) enjoyment.”

Huh? Doesn’t fun have to feel good? Not necessarily, Bogost says. By relinquishing our notions about what fun should feel like, we open ourselves up to seeing our daily activities in a new way. Play can be part of any difficult task, he believes, and though play doesn’t necessarily have to be pleasurable, it can free us from discomfort — which, let’s not forget, is the central ingredient driving distraction.

Given what we know about our propensity for distraction when we’re uncomfortable, reimagining difficult work as fun could prove incredibly empowering. Imagine how powerful you’d feel if you were able to transform the hard, focused work you have to do into something that felt like play.

Is that even possible? Bogost thinks it is, but probably not in the way you think.

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Don’t Sugarcoat It

We’ve all heard Mary Poppins’s advice to add “a spoonful of sugar” and turn a job into a game. Well, Bogost believes Poppins was wrong. He claims her approach “recommends covering over drudgery.” As he writes, “We fail to have fun because we don’t take things seriously enough, not because we take them so seriously that we’d have to cut their bitter taste with sugar. Fun is not a feeling so much as an exhaust produced when an operator can treat something with dignity.”

“Fun is the aftermath of deliberately manipulating a familiar situation in a new way,” Bogost says. The answer, therefore, is to focus on the task itself. Instead of running away from our pain or using rewards like prizes and treats to help motivate us, the idea is to pay such close attention that you find new challenges you didn’t see before. Those new challenges provide the novelty to engage our attention and maintain focus when tempted by distraction.

TV, social media, and other commercially produced distractions use slot machine-like variable rewards to keep us engaged with a constant stream of newness. Bogost points out that we can use the same techniques to make any task more pleasurable and compelling. He gives the example of mowing his lawn. “It may seem ridiculous to call an activity like this ‘fun,’” he writes, yet he learned to love it.

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There is Novelty in Even the Most Tedious Tasks

“Pay close, foolish, even absurd attention to things,” he says. Bogost soaked up as much information as he could about the way grass grows and how to treat it. Then, he created an “imaginary playground” in which the limitations actually helped to produce meaningful experiences. He learned about the constraints he had to operate under, including local weather conditions and what different kinds of equipment can and can’t do. Operating under constraints, Bogost says, is the key to creativity and fun. Finding the optimal path for the mower or beating a record time are other ways to create an imaginary playground.

While learning how to have fun cutting grass may seem like a stretch, people find fun in a wide range of activities that you might not find particularly interesting. Consider my local coffee-obsessed barista who spends a ridiculous amount of time refining the perfect brew, the car buff who toils for countless hours fine-tuning her ride, or the crafter who painstakingly produces intricate sweaters and quilts for everyone he knows. Of course, these people don’t find these activities to be tedious tasks at all; to them, they’re the most fascinating and enthralling things in the entire world. But you can try bringing their mindset — their love of minutiae, their pride in mastery, their eternal yearning to do better — to some of your most dreaded tasks.

For me, I learned to stay focused on the sometimes tedious work of writing books by finding the mystery in it. I write to answer interesting questions and discover novel solutions to old problems. To use a popular aphorism, “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” Today, I write for the fun of it. Of course, it’s also my profession, but by finding the fun, I’m able to do my work without getting as distracted as I once did.

Remember: Finding novelty is only possible when we give ourselves the time to focus intently on a task and look hard for the variability. The great thinkers and tinkerers of history made their discoveries because they were obsessed with the intoxicating draw of discovery, the mystery that pulls us in because we want to know more. Whether it’s uncertainty about our ability to do a task better or faster than last time or coming back to question the unknown day after day, the quest to solve these challenges is what can turn the discomfort we seek to escape into an activity we embrace.

Excerpted from the book Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life by Nir Eyal.

This article also appeared on Ted.com.

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8 Powerful Evening Habits That Will Prepare You For a Better Tomorrow

Preparation

I am a big fan of routines, systems, and principles.

There’s something about order and structure that make everything better.

It’s comforting, and calming knowing how your day will begin and end.

When your day is structured to get your best work done, you begin every workday with a sense of clarity, purpose, and satisfaction. 

Darren Hardy, editor-in-chief of Success Magazine and author of The Compound Effect argues that a person’s morning and evening routines are the “bookends” of a successful life.

When you build better morning and evening routines, you prepare your brain to be better equipped to face the varying challenges each day brings. 

If you swear by morning routines, you could get even more out of your day by creating an evening routine. 

Building routines aren’t easy. It takes self-discipline, and practice to make it work. But the good news is that once you’ve practised a routine for a good number of days it gets harder not to do them.

Stick with it, and your life will never be the same.

Evening routines can set you up for a for a better day tomorrow.

Here is a familiar routine you should give up: After work, you eat dinner, sprawl out on the couch, binge Netflix, you keep using your smartphone until you practically fall asleep, struggle to get a good night sleep, wake up tired or late, and start your day without knowing exactly what needs to be done.

Long before the week is over, you’re burned out and know you won’t hit this week’s goals.

How do you get out of this rut?

Better morning and evening routines!

A routine at night means better time management.

“Maintaining healthy habits is a good idea at any time of the day, but certain ones can give you more bang for your buck when done before bed,” says Rachel Daniels, RD, senior director of nutrition at Virtual Health Partners in New York.

In his book Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, Mason Currey writes about the habits, routines, and rituals of hundreds of artists, including Benjamin Franklin, Karl Marx, Charles Dickens, Pablo Picasso and Ernest Hemingway. Their daily rituals varied wildly, but routines put them in an optimal state of mind to do their best work every day.

Currey came to this conclusion, after studying their habits.

In the right hands, [a routine] can be a finely calibrated mechanism for taking advantage of a range of limited resources: time (the most limited resource of all) as well as willpower, self-discipline, optimism. A solid routine fosters a well-worn groove for one’s mental energies and helps stave off the tyranny of moods.

The close of each day is just as important as the start. Use these habits to get ready for tomorrow and minimise the resistance you encounter in getting things done every day.

1. Get Ready for Tomorrow Today

This is one of the most important things you can do before tomorrow morning.

Planning for tomorrow changes everything.

Spend your last 20 minutes every day to reflect, process, and prioritise for the next day. End your day on purpose.

At home, most people get their work clothes ready, exercise gear out and ready for morning exercise, and get all the relevant documents that they need to use for the next day ready before they sleep.

To prepare better, you could write down how you want to spend your morning. If you do this, you will wake up and know exactly what you need to do to make your day a success.

You will become more effective and more productive because you’re ready and everything is within your reach.

Conversely, if you’re not ready for the next day, imagine what can go wrong.

You wake up late, can’t decide your clothes, you forget where you put your important documents for the meeting, etc.

Your day will be in a mess.

So always plan your morning the night before.

2. Create a Shutdown Ritual

Our lives are incessantly bombarded and interrupted by emails, texts and phone calls — much of it unnecessary — keeping us plugged in and unable to relax even when we are not working.

You gotta get your brain out of “work mode” to have a better and relaxing evening.

It’s easy to take your work back home or even to bed, making it difficult to fall asleep as you think over job-related problems.

Give yourself a buffer period between the time you read your last email at work and the time you go to bed.

Plan your evenings to help you clear your head. It will help you go to bed feeling less stressed and allow you to sleep better, with a clearer mind.

The idea is to get your head out of work before you lie down to go to sleep.

Michael Woodward, Ph.D., organisational psychologist and author of “The YOU Plan,” agrees. “The last thing you need is to be lying in bed thinking about an email you just read from that overzealous boss who spends all their waking hours coming up with random requests driven by little more than a momentary impulse.”

Create a ritual so you can detach from work the minute you sign off.

As soon as you step through the front door, start the after-work ritual that will help put more mental distance between you and your workday.

Time with family, a simple exercise, spending time on your passion project, watching your favourite show, and reading things you could consider.

It could be anything that relaxes you and that is replicable each day.

Truly successful people do anything but work right before bed. They don’t obsessively check their email, and they try not to dwell on work-related issues.

In his book, Drive: The Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us, bestselling author Daniel Pink suggests creating a ritual at the end of the day to help you gain control of your evening.

“Establish a closing ritual. Know when to stop working. Try to end each work day the same way, too. Straighten up your desk. Backup your computer. Make a list of what you need to do tomorrow.”

Create your ‘shutdown ritual’ today to disconnect from the workday tonight.

By creating your own ritual, one that focuses on control and positivity, you’re essentially rewriting every day with a happy ending.

Create a relaxing ritual tells the brain that the working day is over.

3. Establish a Restorative Place to Unwind

If you look at a screen all day, you need physiological and psychological resources to help you wind down.

If you are mentally tired, sitting down and watching television all night is probably the least effective way to unwind.

Find somewhere you feel comfortable, happy and relaxed — and spend 20 minutes there just to focus on calming yourself.

It could be a place to do absolutely nothing.

But it doesn’t necessarily have to be a place of solitude.

“The point is it is your space to settle inner tension, allowing for the renewal of one’s coping resources, contemplation and buying time to gather thoughts,” says Prof. Mark Cropley, a leading psychologist at the University of Surrey specialising in health and stress.

The most important thing to remember is to create a relaxing ritual that tells the brain that work is over.

“Getting changed and having a shower as soon as you arrive home signals to the brain that you have finished for the day, as can short household chores — so long as you don’t usually see them as work,” says Prof Cropley.

4. Make Time to Reflect

“At the end of each day, you should play back the tapes of your performance. The results should either applaud you or prod you.” — Jim Rohn

Benjamin Franklin famously asked himself the same self-improvement question every night:

“What good have I done today?”

Reflection is a simple practice that can put things in perspective for you.

That can take no more than 5 minutes a day but can have a tremendous effect on your day tomorrow.

Remember to take some time to reflect on the positive moments of the day (whilst you ponder over what can be improved) and celebrate the successes, even if they were few and far between.

Laura Vanderkam, author of “I Know How She Does It” and “What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast,” adds: “Taking a few moments to think about what went right over the course of the day can put you in a positive, grateful mood.”

Research shows writing down what you need to do the next day relieves anxiety and helps you enjoy your evening

These are a few questions you can focus on for a purposeful evening of reflection:

What you did and didn’t get done?

How do you feel about it?

If you could have done it in less time and how would you approach it?

What were the things you did that weren’t important or even necessary but felt urgent?

What would you change to be more productive tomorrow?

5. Focus on Mastery Experiences

The time after work is yours to manage.

Some people spend time on their passion projects and work towards their dream career or vision.

Or better still, you can focus on personal development.

Do you want to learn a new skill or language?

It’s the opportune time you can leverage to master a new experience.

Or you could improve stuff you’re good at and try to get better.

Actively engage in a hobby, don’t passively sit on the couch.

The daily grind can easily overshadow passion project like writing a book, starting a blog, learning a new language, starting an online business, creating art, learning an instrument, designing, learning to code, collecting and selling vintage objects etc.

Extracurricular outlets don’t just boost your sanity — they feed back into your day job and can actually make you more productive.

Using 30 minutes or less of your evening to pursue something meaningful to you will immensely improve not only your total well being but a sense of self-worth.

Make time for something you have a natural interest in.

6. Read Something You Enjoy

Experts agree that reading is the very last thing most successful people do before going to sleep — US President Barack Obama and Bill Gates are known to read for at least a half hour before bed.

Reading is a great de-stressor.

It’s the perfect kind of evening ritual: it forces you to lie down and cut out the distractions.

Choose books you enjoy.

It can be whatever you want — inspiration, fiction, anything — but find some time to read and grow and put your mind in a state of learning.

When you go to sleep, your brain is going to consolidate what you just read, which is pretty nice.

If you prefer to read in bed, choose paper books. They will calm your brain and help you transition into sleep quicker.

The potential disadvantage of a digital reader is the amount and type of light coming from screens which can be disruptive to your sleep.

7. Cut Out the Blue Light!

Blue light from tablets, laptops and smartphones interferes with falling asleep because it suppresses melatonin, an essential hormone for sleep.

Devices can be very stimulating and stimulation is the last thing you need when trying to fall asleep at night.

If you are going to have your computer open, in an emergency situation, try using the f.lux software.

It tracks the cycle of the sun in your time zone and latitude and then adjusts your gadget’s levels of blue light to match.

Or, you could dim your device.

A recent Mayo Clinic study found that dimming the brightness to about 50% keeps blue light low enough to not interfere with sleep.

But, digital gadgets aren’t the only culprits; to avoid blue light from your lamps, switch to bulbs that have a low colour temperature.

Richard Wiseman, professor of psychology at the University of Hertfordshire and bestselling author of Night School: Wake up to The Power of Sleep, adds:

“Ten minutes of a smartphone in front of your nose is about the equivalent of an hour long walk in bright daylight. Imagine going for an hour long walk in bright daylight and then thinking, “Now I’ll get some sleep.” It ain’t going to happen.”

So no screens, at least an hour before bed.

8. And Prioritize Sleep!

It can be easy to minimize the importance of sleep, but it’s absolutely essential for optimum performance.

Good sleep on a regular basis is critical to maintaining balanced mental, emotional, and physical health.

Stick to the same sleep and wake schedule.

Remove clutter and items that remind you of work from your bedroom.

Thomas Oppong is the founder of AllTopStartups and writes on science-based answers to problems in life about creativity, productivity, and self-improvement.

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10 Scientifically Proven Ways to Be Incredibly Productive

Productivity

Everyone wants to work smarter, not harder. So here’s how.

Inc.

• Jeff Haden

I absolutely believe in the power of hard work. Like Jimmy Spithill, skipper of Team Oracle USA, says, "Rarely have I seen a situation where doing less than the other guy is a good strategy."

That's basically my mantra: I may not be as talented, or educated, or experienced as other people...but I can always try to outwork them.

But we can all work smarter, too. That's the real key to success: working harder and smarter.

Fortunately, working harder is easy (kind of). You just have to, well, work harder. But how can you work smarter? That's a lot tougher. And that's why I got the following tips from Belle Beth Cooper, co-founder of Hello Code, which makes Exist, a cool app that connects all of your services to turn that data into insights about your life.

Here's Belle Beth:

1. Rework Your To-Do List

One of the most counterintuitive but effective methods I've found for increasing productivity is to limit how many items you add to your to-do list.

One way to do this is by choosing one to three most important tasks, or MITs. These are the big, tough tasks for your day that you really need to get done; the ones that will keep you in the office past the time you planned to leave, or working after dinner if you don't get through them.

Leo Babauta of Zen Habits advocates doing these before you move on to other tasks:

"Do your MITs first thing in the morning, either at home or when you first get to work. If you put them off to later, you will get busy and run out of time to do them. Get them out of the way, and the rest of the day is gravy!"

The rest of your to-do list can be filled up with minor tasks that you would do as long as you complete your MITs. Make sure you work on those before you move on to less critical tasks and you'll find you feel a whole lot more productive at the end of the day.

Another to-do list tip that can reduce work anxiety is to write your to-do list the night before. I often end up in bed not only thinking about what I need to do the next day but also planning the day; obviously, that makes it difficult to sleep. Writing my to-do list before I go to bed helps me relax and sleep better.

And rather than wasting time in the morning because I don't know what to work on first, I can jump straight into my first MIT the next day.

One more to-do list tip: Focus only on today.

My most recent and favorite change to my to-do list has been to separate my "today" list from the master list of everything I need to get done.

I often feel anxious about all the things I know I need to do at some point. I need to write them down somewhere so I don't forget them, otherwise I worry about when or if they will get done. But I don't want those items cluttering up my list for today; that will just make today seem even busier than it already is.

My solution is to make a big list of everything I need to do. Then, every night, I move a few things to my to-do list for the next day. (I use one big list with priority markers, so that anything "high" priority moves to the top and becomes part of my "today" list.)

That lets me focus on what I must do today, but it also gives me a place to dump every little task I think of that someday must get done.

Take it from David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done: "Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them." Park your ideas on your to-do list, but make sure you create a "today" list and a "someday" list. That way, you won't waste energy trying to remember important ideas and you'll ensure today won't feel overwhelming.

2. Measure Your Results, Not Your Time

The whole idea of working smarter rather than harder stems from the fact that many of us put in more and more hours only to find we don't get more done. That's why we want to find methods to be more productive in less time.

One way to do this is to adjust the way you measure productivity. If you evaluate yourself by what you actually get done rather than the time it takes to get something done, you'll start to notice a difference in how you work.

For example, if you have a big project to complete, try breaking it down into "completable" sections. For instance, I like to break down my blog posts into sections and small tasks like adding images. With a set of smaller tasks making up a big project, I can check off what I get done each day, even if it takes me many days to finish the whole project. I get a nice little rush every time I check off a task within a blog post, even if it was just a 200-word section. It helps me maintain momentum and keep going until the whole post is done.

Another way to measure what you get done each day is to keep a "done list," a running log of everything you complete in a day. Lots of companies use "done lists" to share what each individual has done each day using tools like iDoneThis.

If you start keeping a list of everything you get done in a day, you might be surprised how much more motivated you are to do work that matters and stay focused so you get even more done.

Focus on measuring by results, not by time on task, and you'll definitely get more done.

3. Build Habits to Help You Start Working

If I don't have a plan for what to work on first, I tend to procrastinate and waste time in the mornings. You might have a different danger time for procrastination, but getting started seems to be a hurdle for most of us.

One way to overcome this problem is building a routine that tells your brain and body it's time to work.

Your routine could be something as simple as your daily commute or grabbing a coffee on the way to work. I usually sit at my desk with my coffee and check up on my favorite sites to see if there's any news. Once my coffee is finished, that's my cut-off point: It's my trigger to start working.

Other ways to get into a working mindset can include sitting down at your desk or workspace, turning off your phone or putting it away, exercising, stretching, or eating breakfast. You could even have an album or playlist that gets you in the mood to work and listen to that as part of your routine.

The same technique works on weekends, too. Although you might be tempted to let go of your routine entirely on your days off, many people find that maintaining a weekend routine that doesn't differ too much from their weekdays works well: The more they let go of their routine on the weekends, the longer it takes them to pick it up again during the week.

Routines aren't a sign of boring, regimented people. Routines are a sign of people who have goals and have found the best way--for them--to actually accomplish their goals.

4. Track Where You Waste Time

If you're struggling to be productive, it's tempting to change your routine or try new solutions before you uncover the real problem. (I've done this in the past and found it never leads to a long-term solution.)

The first step in becoming more productive is to identify your regular time-sucks. Start by tracking what you do every morning to get ready for work. You might find you're spending time on things such as choosing your clothes, something you could do the night before. (Or like Leo Widrich, co-founder of Buffer, you could just wear jeans and a white T-shirt every day.)

Then, keep going: Track how you spend your time during the day and look for patterns. A tool like RescueTime can help. Maybe you'll find you're getting caught up on Facebook too often. Or that what should have been a two-minute work conversation regularly turns into a 10-minute chat session.

Once you know what takes up your time or leads you to procrastinate, start making specific changes around those habits.

I used to waste a lot of time in the mornings checking out my favorite sites for news or updates. Now I factor it into my routine; as I mentioned, I do it while I drink my coffee, and when the coffee is gone, it's time to start working.

5. Build Habits to Help You Stop Working

This one might seem a bit strange, but it really works. Some of us struggle to stop working, rather than (or as well as) start working.

It's easy to just keep going for another hour, or to get your computer out after dinner and work until well after bedtime. The worst thing about these habits is that they encourage us to put off our MITs; we figure we'll be working long enough to be sure to get them done. (But, of course, we don't.)

Here are a few ways to switch on at-home time and leave work behind:

Quit while you're ahead. Take it from Hemingway: "The best way is always to stop when you are going good and when you know what will happen next. If you do that every day...you will never be stuck."

His advice can apply to all kinds of work. Stopping in the middle of a project can work well: You know what you've done, you know exactly what you'll do next, and you'll be excited to get started again.

Set a firm cut-off time. Sean Ogle wrote a great post about this. Most days he has a (pretty extreme) strict cut-off time of noon. You could make this work with an evening cut-off time to get you out of work by, say, 5 p.m.

Ogle gets up early, so he has five to six hours of work time before his midday cut-off point. But because he's strict about stopping work at noon, he still needs to be ruthless in prioritizing his tasks.

Another benefit of a strict cut-off time is you'll be a lot more motivated to complete your MITs first; the pressure of a looming deadline will help keep you focused.

Another way to limit your work time is to unplug your laptop power cord. Then you can only work as long as your battery lasts. It's great motivation to get important things done more quickly.

Plan something cool after work. Another tip from Ogle is to plan an activity or event for after work. In Ogle's case, he plans to catch up with friends or attend events around 12:30 or 1 p.m., which helps reinforce his noon cut-off time.

If you want to get out of the office around 5 p.m., you could set up a dinner date, a quick after-work drink with a friend, or a family visit. External forces and peer pressure can give you motivation to get things done within the time you have.

Create a wind-down routine. Having a routine to help you wind down from work can be helpful if you often struggle to switch off. Light exercise works well for me, so I like to walk home from the office or take a walk after work. Many people go for an evening walk as part of their going-to-bed routine because it's such a good winding-down activity.

Journaling can be really relaxing, as can talking through your day with a partner or friend. Something Benjamin Franklin used to ask himself every night, "What good have I done today?" Writing about your day can be a good way to reflect and keep a log of what you've done, as well as to transition out of your work mode.

If you're getting into the habit of planning your day the night before, this can be a good way to cap off your workday: Pick out your MITs for tomorrow and create a task list, so you can relax once you leave work.

6. Take More Breaks

In 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen Covey tells a story about a woodcutter whose saw gets more blunt as time passes and he continues cutting down trees. If the woodcutter were to stop sawing, sharpen his saw, and go back to cutting the tree with a sharp blade, he would actually save time and effort in the long run.

The analogy is an easy one to remember but harder to put into practice. Here's what Covey says about sharpening the saw in your life:

"Sharpen the Saw means preserving and enhancing the greatest asset you have--you. It means having a balanced program for self-renewal in the four areas of your life: physical, social/emotional, mental, and spiritual."

Sharpening the saw is a great habit to get into in all areas of your life, but I think it can be especially beneficial when it comes to work and helping you avoid burnout.

On average, your brain is able to remain focused for only 90 minutes, and then you need at least 15 minutes of rest. (The phenomenon is based on ultradian rhythms.) By taking breaks roughly every 90 minutes, you allow your mind and body to renew--and be ready to fire off another 90-minute period of high activity.

For some people, 15- to 20-minute breaks might be tough to pull off, but taking short breaks throughout the day can still help you to refresh your mind and reset your attention span.

7. Take More Naps

Research shows naps lead to improvement in cognitive function, creative thinking, and memory performance. In particular, napping benefits the learning process by helping you take in and retain information better.

The improved learning process comes from naps actually helping your brain to solidify memories. According to Max Read, "Research indicates that when memory is first recorded in the brain--in the hippocampus, to be specific--it's still 'fragile' and easily forgotten, especially if the brain is asked to memorize more things. Napping, it seems, pushes memories to the neocortex, the brain's 'more permanent storage,' preventing them from being 'overwritten.'"

One study into memory found that participants did remarkably better on a test following a nap than those who didn't sleep at all.

Not only are naps beneficial for consolidating memories and helping you remember new information, they're also useful in helping you avoid burnout, since research shows burnout is a signal that you can't take in more information in this part of your brain until you've had a chance to sleep.

8. Spend More Time in Nature

Daniel Goleman, author of Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence, suggests spending time in nature to help you reset your attention span and relax your mind.

One experiment he mentions tested how relaxed people were when taking a walk down a city street versus in a quiet park. The study found that the level of attention needed to navigate a busy city street is high enough that the walk doesn't let the brain relax enough to reset your focus level:

"Unlike natural environments, urban environments are filled with stimulation that captures attention dramatically and additionally requires directed attention (e.g., to avoid being hit by a car), making them less restorative."

Spending time in nature, however, allows your mind to fully relax and unwind and helps you focus longer when you return to work. Plus, other research has found that for students, motivation to learn is higher when they are outside instead of in a classroom.

9. Move and Work in Blocks

I recently read a blog post by Joel Runyon about a method he calls "workstation popcorn."

The idea is that you set up at various cafes, workspaces, or, as in Colin's case, pubs to get chunks of work done throughout the day. Workstation popcorn starts with a clear, thought-out to-do list: You create a plan for what you will accomplish at each location so you can immediately jump into those tasks.

Runyon breaks up his to-do list into sections--one per cafe that he plans to visit--and each section into three clear tasks. Once he gets through the group of tasks he has set, he moves on to the next cafe on his list.

Of course, you can sort out your task list however suits you best, but the important part to note is having a clear finishing point based on your task list, rather than the time you will move to a new location. And when you move, cycling or walking is a good way to go, according to Runyon:

"Use this time to practice your Zen, take a break from your screen, and get some movement into your day. Keep your phone in your pocket, and move. Take a break away from work for at least 30 minutes."

Many people find that break period helpful for thinking through what they're working on or what they will do next. Runyon also noted in his post that he has been more productive, more active during the day, and working fewer hours since he started this process.

10. Check Your Email First Thing

This one is fairly counterintuitive; basically everyone says not to check email right away, but I do and find it extremely useful. Here are some ways checking email first helps me to be more productive during the day.

If you work in a remote team, a business trend that is increasingly more common, you'll know what it's like to have half of your team (or more) working while you're asleep.

If you need to work closely with others, it's important to check in before you start your workday and make sure you're on the same page as everyone else.

Dealing with important issues first thing helps me make quick decisions about whether my day needs to be adjusted to fit in with what everyone else is doing or whether I can proceed with the tasks I already had planned.