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Are you achieving all you can every day? Feeling like your days just get away from you? Do you look back and wonder where did the time go?
Make sure to grab my handy booklet the Guide to Leading Fulfilled Days: 7 Simple Habits to Make Every Day Productive so you can easily record, reflect, plan, and make every day wildly successful!
No skills or much time required…
I’ve got some great tips today. They’re an orderly set of tips and habits you can implement. The greatest part about these habits is they require no skills and very little time to put in place.
Here are seven simple habits to make every day productive. The first two, in fact, start the night before.
1. Identify three goals you want to accomplish the next day
Think in advance about what you want to accomplish. The most important aspect when identifying these goals is to make sure there’s an element of completeness.
You don’t want your goals to be goals such as “make progress on my project.” It’s too loose. Focus more on what you need to complete in step one of the project. If step one is too big to complete in one day, then identify the portion of step one.
Whatever it is, just make sure there is some conclusion you can draw and that there is an element of completeness to it.
Also, don’t have too many goals. If you have too many goals, you’ll be chasing too many rabbits and won’t catch any. You get the gist.
2. Schedule your entire calendar for the next day (the night before)
Schedule your day. I stress the word your day.
You will be far less likely to get interrupted by other people’s issues or other people’s requests if you’ve made your plan.
Never ever—I repeat never—check your morning email before your day is scheduled.
If you do that, you’re likely going to run amok and other people’s issues will interrupt your intentions. You won’t be able to work on the key projects or goals you identified.
Also, I recommend scheduling every single minute of your day. If you don’t know what you’re doing between 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM, schedule “open time” or “buffer time” or “recovery time.”
That will give you a chance to catch up or handle unexpected issues that arise during the day.
3. Identify three things you’re grateful for as early in the morning as possible
However you start your day, whatever morning routine is, be grateful. Be deliberately grateful.
I get up. Take care of my dogs. Go to the gym to exercise. I come home and meditate. I eat. That’s my routine.
Whether you just get up and take a shower or stretch and have a cup of coffee or dance or whatever, spend a moment to be grateful. It takes a mere minute to write down three things for which you are grateful.
It is physiologically impossible to be stressed and grateful at the same time. You’re giving yourself a chance to be stress-free even if it’s for mere seconds.
Put yourself in the right mindset.
There is another aspect to gratitude. You can be assured gratitude is a wonderful place where there is a force greater than you and greater than I that is always available to you in a positive way.
You will feel better and better things will happen to you and for you. It’s just a wonderful way to start your day.
4. Identify what you accomplished during the day
After you work your day, write down what you actually achieved related to those three big goals.
Note how that positions you for tomorrow. This will help you plan tomorrow.
5. Consider your lessons of the day
Write down a couple or three lessons you actually learned for that day.
It’s really, really important to take a few minutes to think about what transpired over the course of the day and what you actually learned.
What did you learn about yourself or your projects or the people you work or what to do or not to do?
If you don’t identify these lessons, you’re not going to feel accomplished and you’ll make the same mistakes.
6. Celebrate your victories
Write down your three wins for the day.
Give yourself a little brag zone. It’s okay to say, “Wahoo, I accomplished goals one, two, and three!” or “I sold my first project!” or “Our marketing project is complete!”
It could be anything you feel great about accomplishing that day. Just make sure your celebrate something.
7. Identify three things you’re grateful for as late in the day as possible
Repeat habit three. As late in the day as possible, and I stress as late in the day as reasonably possible, identify three more things you’re grateful for. Preferably, these will be three items from that day (but they don’t have to be).
Later in the day is best because if these are your last thoughts of the day you’ll have a better night’s sleep. You’ll go to sleep, wake up a lot more refreshed, and go into your next day in a much better frame of mind.