If you want to accomplish more during the day, or feel like you need to get more control over your life, I share my 3 favourite activities for a productive day.
Getting Up Early for a Productive Day
The day my life changed was when I decided to go to the gym in the morning. After many failed attempts at going after work, after a long and tiring day, I needed a change of plans.
Going to the gym in the morning ensures that I don’t have excuses yet to skip my session. And it applies to a lot of things, not just the gym.
Our brain wants to go to the easiest and safest solution, whatever the problem is. During the day, we are faced with time pressure, deadlines, to-do lists, fears, anger and stress, hunger, meet up, etc. Of course your brain and your tiredness are not going to get you to exercise. It’s natural.
Doing your hard tasks in the morning is the ideal time to not have any excuses or “good” reasons not to do them.
And in order to put more into your morning, often it will mean that you need to get up earlier. But don’t sacrifice your sleep ! Ideally you need around 8h of sleep, so do the maths. If your objective is to get up at 6.30am, you need to turn your lights off at around 10.30pm.
Which leads me to my second hack for my productive day.
Prepare Your Day the Night Before
When I make the list of what I’m going to do in the morning, I prepare for it the night before. If I’m going for a workout first thing in the morning, I will lay my workout clothes by my bed. If I want to drink water before anything else, I put a glass of water on my bedside table.
When you organise yourself in this way, you cannot really go off track. The plan is laid before you. You would need extra reasons to NOT do these activities.
Think about what you’re going to do, eat, and when you do, it becomes much easier to actually do these. You have mentally prepared yourself for what’s coming, and it becomes acceptable to your brain and your body.
Being prepared is the key to success.
Have a Strong Routine
Being prepared is indeed the key to success. And when I know exactly when I will do each task, at what time, in which order, it is so easy to stick to the plan.
I have a morning that can change over time. But there are some fundamentals that I rarely overlook.
I start by checking my basal body temperature to know where I’m at in my cycle. Then I use my tongue scraper before drinking any water (more on this here). I go journal and write on a full page of A5 notebook to put my thoughts, plans, and misunderstood emotions or situations on paper.
I meditate for 5mn, and i go to the gym or do some yoga. Exercising and moving my body is really important to me, and it should be important to you too. The aim is to feel great, proud, dynamic, to help your body fight ageing and diseases.
And then I’m ready to face the day and anything that can come at me. All of this takes me about 2h or more, so I wake up accordingly. I do not have children so of course this helps massively, I sleep without interruption.
I’m absolutely not saying you should everything I do. But putting your non-negotiable at the beginning of the day before they become diluted in the priorities of the day, is the way to win the day and tackle anything.
How Do You Have Productive Days?
What about you, how do you remain productive? Do you have a routine that helps you stay on track? Maybe you don’t but you still manage to do things your way and accomplish a lot during your day.
Please share your hacks in the comments !
You might also like these:
Why Breathing Mindfully is Important (and my favourite techniques)
Why a Self-care Day is Never Selfish
Managing your Time, or How to Get More Time in Your Day
