I’m quite open about how I go about my daily life. If you’ve watched any of my Instagram, YouTube or Facebook videos, then you’d know that I live for what I do and I follow a strict daily routine that I know for a fact sets me up to succeed.
I recently hosted a sales training seminar and many of the passionate young salespeople attending wanted me to share a bit of my daily routine. I know that while some people are creatures of habit when it comes to their own routines and prefer to live by the motto, “If it’s not broken, don’t fix it”, I do think that we should all reassess how we go about our daily rituals in order to determine whether or not ours needs tweaking.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, the word “routine” refers to a sequence of actions regularly followed. So if you wake up early for only three days of the week, then this doesn’t really constitute a proper routine. I follow the same morning ritual every single day:
4:30 AM: I wake up
5:00 – 6:30 AM: I train at the gym (or outdoors if the weather permits)
6:30 – 7:30 AM: I shower, get ready for work, read the news, and eat breakfast.
7:45 AM: I arrive at the office and write my to-do-list for the day. I always use two sheets of paper and I write a detailed list of all the tasks that I’ve got to get done. I then use the second sheet of paper to rewrite all of those tasks, listing the worst ones first so that I can get them over and done with.
I work in 15-minute slots, instead of hour by hour. So I divide the things that I need to get done into these bite-sized chunks. This allows me to be more effective with my time because I know that I’ve only got 15 minutes to get each task done.
It may seem self-explanatory, but the importance of a daily ritual such as the one that I follow not only does wonders for your productivity levels, but also for your mental health. Your habits influence every single aspect of your life.
Instead of simply going with the flow, I encourage you to map out a schedule that you’ll be able to follow. Once you get started, it’ll become easier and easier to follow. Take, for example, the trivial task of brushing your teeth in the morning after you wake up and at night before you go to bed. We all do this every day (or at least I hope that’s the case), and we don’t have to think about it actively. We just do it. It’s as natural as breathing. And with time, you’ll be able to achieve other productive tasks just as easily.
Here are my top tips on how to create a daily routine that works for you:
- Set your alarm clock for the same time every day: This includes weekends! Just because it’s the weekend, doesn’t mean that you should waste the precious time that you have by sleeping the day away. By doing this, your body clock will soon adapt, and you’ll never have a blue Monday again, especially since every day will start the same way.
- Make your bed: I know that I’ve mentioned this before, but by making your bed every day, you automatically wire your brain into knowing that it’s go-time! There will be no temptation to get back into bed, and you would have started the day on the correct footing. Having a cleaner is no excuse for not making your own bed!
- Make a list of your daily tasks: After you’ve exercised, eaten breakfast, and arrived at work, write out your to-do-list. Then rewrite this list from the most difficult tasks down to the easiest tasks. Executing all those things will be a lot easier, and you’ll have more energy to handle all those ad-hoc tasks that come your way during the course of the day.
- Write out a weekly schedule: Stick this schedule on your fridge, on your mirror, or somewhere where you are guaranteed to see it daily.
- Go to bed at the same time every night: If you want to wake up at a decent hour in the morning, then you need to go to bed at the same time every evening. I don’t care if Game of Thrones is on! Getting some shuteye is way more important than staring at the TV.
