In an ideal world, this is how my life looks like everyday.
November 25, 2018. 148/365 days of learnings from yesterday. This is a daily writing practice + life lessons journal of sorts. I’m committing to write ~100-word article daily. Short or long form. Ugly or brilliant. The objective is to write daily for 15 mins without fail, even when life happens.
Download a PDF copy to post on your wall or Make a copy of the spreadsheet and edit accordingly
This is an ever evolving daily routine.
It’s a system I’ve devised from combining various productivity tips and routines of the most successful, of the geniuses, of the most productive people.
I took what can work for me and ignored what seems futile in my kind of person, like waking up at five in the morning.
I tried, though. I keep trying still.
Daily Routine Elements Explained
If you’re interested to learn how each element helps in boosting productivity, consequently success, keep reading this section. Otherwise, feel free to jump to the end.
- Power Hour
The Power Hour helps you to “prime yourself to accomplish more and be more fulfilled” in the day in one hour or less.
Athletes, performers, and all top achievers warm up and do mindsetting. You should too!
Power Hour usually includes the following elements but feel free to add or subtract according to your own lifestyle and personal needs:
Body
a. Drink lemon water - wakes up your systems, hydrates you after a long sleep, boosts your immune system, helps digestions, detoxifies. Google and you’ll discover the many benefits of lemon water in the morning.
b. Morning stretch — your body needs warm up before you rush your way to all the things you need to do in the morning. Your body is your tool. Prepare your tools first before you make them work so you function best and it doesn’t get damaged easily. You slept for about 7 hours, hopefully, more or less. Like anything that got stuck for a long time, you need to wake up your muscles, too!
Mind
c. Making up bed — life is all a mental game. Make yourself believe you can do anything with your first easy accomplishment for the day — making your bed. It’s easy, it takes less than 3 minutes, but it impacts your psyche and your day!
d. Gratitude log — feel good first thing in the morning and you would’ve set up your day well. Operate in the space of gratitude and you’ll see everything that comes your well is happening for you, not to you.
e. Journaling — harvest all your mind’s outputs after overnight of marinading and processing thoughts while you sleep. Download all it has derived from patterns of your thoughts and you might just get your best ideas for your current priorities. Your outputs first before consuming other’s inputs. This way you hone your creativity to get used to actively producing and creating instead of just passively consuming.
f. Visualization — see clearly in your head what you want in your life. Do it everyday and your subconscious will be trained to focus on it until it manifests in your conscious mind. This way, your mind will be trained to look out for ways, connections, networks, techniques to make it happen. It’s not magic or sorcery. It’s a subtle way of leading your mind to focus on things that you want instead of aimlessly being distracted into multiple directions of randomness.
g. Motivational Incantations — call it mantra, call it chants, these are words or phrases you’ll repeat daily to make yourself believe you can do or have whatever it is that you desire. It’s drilling down in your mind what you need to become to be the person who can make what you want happen. Fake it ’til you make it. Say it until you genuinely believe it. Whatever story you tell yourself, you’ll operate on that. Make it positive.
h. 3 daily important questions — these questions will focus you to the three things that will make your life meaningful and purposeful.
-How can I help? A purposeful life is a life in service of others.
-How can I be better? You are a work in progress. Work daily on improving yourself so you can better help others.
-How can I create value? For your work to be meaningful, it has to be of value to others. This is the question you have to answer everyday to make sure you aren’t simply working in your business/career, but you’re always working on it.
i. Definite Chief Aim — remember your top goal for the year so you don’t lose sight of why you’re doing what you’re doing. Always remind yourself of the one thing you wanted to achieve for the year (or your life).
j. Listen to podcast or read an article — keep enriching yourself so you may continue enriching other people’s lives. A quick top up on your knowledge, motivations, skills, or perspective of the world can make a difference on how you approach your day. Read a book, listen to a podcast, watch a tutorial, learn a foreign language. Use the time when your brain is still fresh and receptive.
Strategizing
k. 3+2 rule — define the top priorities for the day. (If this doesn’t work for you there are a lot of other strategies available for productivity.) I define 3 big/major rocks/tasks for the day and fill it in between (or when energy is lowest) with 2 small/minor (even mindless) tasks. This way you’re sure you’re tackling what needs to be done that builds up your definite chief aim. Otherwise, you’ll follow the next shiny random things but lead you nowhere near your goal.
2. Daily Tiny Victory — do one task you can finish in 15 minutes that’s a step towards your top goal. Make sure you define your DTV so that if the day unfolds and you seem to be out of your element, having a bad day, you can force yourself to do this daily tiny victory and your day would’ve been victorious nonetheless. It encourages you to stop procrastinating. It eliminates the overwhelm that usually comes with important goals. Write, paint, call, email, exercise (or any other deliberately defined task) for 15 minutes. Only for 15 minutes and your day will have been productive. This 15 minutes of DTV may (or may not) bring you the necessary momentum to zone out and do work for hours. Either way, you’ve done important work.
3. Work batching — time blocks make you focus for an hour or two doing nothing else but that task. You’ll stop feeling guilty you’re doing this task over the other (usually when both are important). Each task has a time and a dedicated brain space so you’re not all over the place, ultimately achieving nothing. This productivity trick allows you to be more efficient with time. It eliminates switching back and forth between tasks that require different skillsets and brain centers. The repetitive refocusing takes time and burns out your brain. I use Pomodoro Technique to help me manage my time and actually focus on a single batch of task.
4. Pre-defined email sessions — this productivity technique stops you from frequently checking your email that you know ends up making you unproductive. Emails put other people’s intentions on the forefront of your focus. At the end of the day, you keep putting out fire or responding to other people’s “emergencies” or agenda and your own top tasks for the day are nowhere near ticked. When you know you have a dedicated time for emails, you can stop the addictive habit of checking the email and go back to your priority. When it’s email time, do nothing but email. If something is urgent and life-and-death important, people will call you.
5. Exercise — imagine exercise as a way to make sure all your pipes are working well, blood’s flowing freely such that all systems are well-oxygenated and well-supplied with energy. Your body is your vehicle to make all your goals in life happen. Make sure it’s tuned up so you won’t have to change parts unnecessarily or risk slowing down. You can walk 3 blocks, do jumping jacks, push up, do planking, practice yoga, climb the stairs, bike to the store, jog in place. The choices are infinite. You don’t need excuses like equipment, gym membership, outfit, or time.
6. Meditation — this practice lets you give your brains (that work 24/7) a break. You already know how important breaks are for everything, your most important machine included. For a good 10 minutes, just focus on your breath or your mantra, or whatever kind of meditation works for you so your mind can stop working too hard for a few minutes. It can rest and recharge. It also helps you to calm down, master your mind (your temperament, your attitude, your emotions, your responses, your focus) and live a less stressed life.
7. Deliberate learning — Self-improvement is crucial to success. The moment you stop learning, you stop growing. Learn a skill vital for your work, learn psychology, business strategies, sales and marketing — whatever you need in your life’s work so that you’re more efficient and you become a better decision maker.
8. Done list journaling — While people are addicted to making to-do lists and feeling frustrated about it, done list helps you feel good about your day. You’ll notice and appreciate all the small things you were able to focus on and accomplish for today. This list is more encouraging than your to-do list with so many items left undone. A done list journal is a better way to end your day on a positive note, I think.
9. Going to bed the same time every night — your habits work for you when your will power has ran low. Your day starts the night before. When you sleep right on time enough to get 7.5 hours of sleep (or how much sleep you need), you feel energized and ready to take on the day. You know that when you sleep late, you feel fatigued the next day and the downward spiral of a dreaded day begins.
10. Nightly skin care regimen — your skin needs care especially, but not only, when you begin to age. Build a skin care routine so you wake up with good, plump skin. Basic skin care includes washing the face, toning it, and applying a moisturizer. It can get more complicated and extensive once you’ve made it a habit and learn more about.
11. Reciting Definite Chief Aim every night — Before you sleep, leave a request to your subconscious on what it should focus on to push up to your conscious mind. When you recite what you want, your subconscious works on figuring out how to make it happen while you sleep by tracing patterns in your brains, processing what were previously inputted, sorting and filing data. Give it a homework so that when you wake up, it will give you an answer sourced from all the references you stored in your brains.
12. Reading a book before sleeping — Make it a fiction or risk stimulating your brains with work references or books that you’re interested enough to keep you up at night. Fictions will lull your mind to sleep. It also gives your brains a different kind of input activating another part of your brain thereby putting your “thinking” part of the brain to rest.
13. Sleeping for at least 7 hours — sleeping is the only time the cells in your brains are recharged and repaired. If you don’t get enough sleep, the brain minions can’t finish their work to clean out dead brain cells, heal damages ones, and recharge used up ones. This means with lack of sleep, your brains are working cluttered with dead, damaged, and low-energy cells. Wonder why you can’t focus or think well? You’re operating on sub-optimal levels. 7 hours is enough time for the brain minions to do the entire brain maintenance.
If I can’t complete 7.5 hours though, I set the alarm in 1.5 hour (90-minute) durations. This is the length of one sleep cycle (1.5 hours, 3 hrs, 4.5 hours, 6 hours, 7.5 hours. The iPhone clock app makes it easy to set this). Wake up at the 1st hour of the sleep cycle and you’d be forcing yourself to wake up in the middle of your deep sleep, you’ll be so disoriented and groggy.
Yes, that’s why.
There are ideal days. In fact, I’ve been successful for 4 weeks in a row living an ideal life.
I felt systematic, organized, productive.
Until life happens, or my routine-averse personality overpowers my will.
And then I try another streak again.
Such is life.
But I don’t quit. I just keep trying. More productive days are better than no productive day.
What daily systems are you putting in place to get you to your “overnight success”?
“I don’t know what to do with my life!”
Is this your battle cry lately? I’ve created a free email course to guide you to answer what you should do with your life. Join this limited access email course on discovering your life’s work. Get clear on what you’re here on this world for to do.
