Five Habits For A Productive Day

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Five Habits For A Productive Day

Meditation

All successful and productive people use rituals or habits. They are the tiny and invisible routines and collections of habits that people do every single day. They do it to make sure that they get things done, that they don’t get interrupted, and that they can sustainably move towards their goals, one day at a time. In the previous episode, I spoke about the core habits required to start your day well. In this episode, I will focus on the habits required to have a productive day thereafter. The first one is meditation. One of the rituals of highly successful people is meditation and mindfulness. Before you dismiss it as mystique woo-woo, meditation is a very powerful and practical routine. It helps you create time, attention, space and focus on yourself away from all the chaos of the world around you. It can take many forms from straightforward meditation to breathing exercises, to walking, to giving yourself much needed solitude during the day.

The key to making meditation work is to find the time that works for you. Find a place that works for you and just start doing it. The benefits of meditation are many like a calmer mind, the ability to collect your thoughts and the ability to focus. Let’s not mention happiness, productivity and the superpower psychological processing engine that helps you regulate emotions, mood and your ability to manage the increasingly complex world around us. If you know someone who is always agitated or angry at the world or unable to control their emotions, they don’t meditate. In fact, a lot of hyperactive individuals who we labeled as ADD probably have never learned to focus. Meditation can help a lot with them. In the wide range of methodologies, apps and information of meditation available now, there is no reason you can’t reap the benefits for one to two daily meditation sessions.

Exercise

Regular exercise. When asked what the secret of his success was, Richard Branson famously replied, “Exercise.” He’s absolutely right. Regular exercise is one of the rituals that all highly successful people have. We are talking about the physical exercise that keeps our bodies fit and strong. The great thing about exercise is that there is no one right exercise. There are literally hundreds of exercises you can choose from, from weight lifting to CrossFit to cycling, team sports, to simply going for a brisk walk. The key thing with this ritual is to work out what it is you want to do and find a time slot for it in your schedule then do whatever it takes to make sure that you show up. I alternate between having a high-intensity and a low-intensity day. In the high-intensity day, I do more aerobics stuff. In my low-intensity day, I do more stretching and yoga. On the weekends, I just chill and swim or have a walk. Every few months, I start my Tai chi training again. In this way, my brain never gets used to what I’m going to do next. There’s always a sense of entertainment and variety.

The benefits are more than can be described in words from a sense of health and youthfulness through increased physical and mental energy to well-being, to productivity, to success. There is an endless snowball of benefits that comes from a properly implemented exercise ritual. It makes all your other rituals and habits stronger and it helps you build ongoing self-discipline. It also releases a spectrum of natural hormones and feel-good chemistry into your system, which makes it self-reinforcing over time. This means you’ll live longer, be able to do more and be more awesome. It isn’t that difficult choice. You can be lethargic, overweight and worrying about the spare time forming around the midsection and feel unfit, unhealthy and generally terrible. You can be fit, healthy and in control and feel that you can take anything the world throws at you. It’s your choice.

Structural Productivity

Structure productivity. The next ritual or habit of highly successful people is called structural productivity and it’s also known as planning your day. The reason we call it structural productivity is because the ritual involved setting up a time-based structure and schedule for your days. By simply doing this and following the schedule, you automatically become productive. Here’s how it works. First, you find your core activities like work and exercise and you defy them and you put them in your schedule. You then locate the times around these core activities and fill them with other activities. It also highlights the things you must do every single day and selects them as non-negotiable. It also contrasts them against the things that are flexible every day, unless you know that when an emergency comes up, there are things that you can push back and change. After you implemented this habit or ritual, you will be able to go into every day knowing that you’ve got most you could get done in that day. This is an extremely liberating feeling.

Ways To Be Productive: Regular exercise makes all your other rituals and habits stronger and helps you build ongoing self-discipline.

We’re all confined by 24 hours each day and most of us feel that we should be doing more. By having structural productivity in place, we know that our days are optimized and that we did the best we could and be proud of it. Structural productivity provides a real progress tracking system for our time that other people just don’t have. They’re always getting swept up in the day’s emergencies and the ebbs and flows. If you’re feeling constantly overwhelmed or slowing by the things that are happening around you, you need structural productivity. It will restore the sense of controlling others that you’re looking for.

Taking A Break

Taking break. This particular habit is a bit of an odd one. It’s a ritual or habit of not doing anything. Taking a break is all about disconnecting from work, letting your mind and body rest and be able to come back from that and continue being productive. More people feel that they want to power through the work day and get all this stuff done. What they don’t realize is that you’re just tired all day trying not to fall asleep and end up using stimulants like caffeine as a substitute for taking brakes. That cycle of tiredness and trying to power through makes someone bitter towards their situation in life.

Evening Ritual

When you implement the proper taking break to downtime ritual, you’ll be able to take breaks knowing that you worked enough in a given day and this is important. You’ll be able to pause from your work, go away, enjoy your break and then come back and pick up exactly where you left off. This gives you a great sense of control over your energy throughout the day and can prevent you from feeling overwhelmed, tired or constantly sleepy throughout a tough day. The final ritual of highly successful people or habit that I want to cover here is the evening ritual. It’s the opposite of the morning ritual or habit. Whereas the morning ritual or habit starts with the day, the evening ritual ends it. It describes the wind-down process that you go through at the end of the day to get a fantastic night of sleep. This means no insomnia and forgets about worries and stresses at the end of the day and have a great night of sleep and rest.

If you ever had a long night of sleep but still wake up feeling that you didn’t sleep at all, it’s because you’re lacking at evening habit or ritual. It consists of a few key moves from writing down any stray thoughts and open loops to turning off electronics after a certain time of the day. One lucky audience that posts a review on iTunes will win a private confidential consultation and coaching with me on discovering your soul’s purpose. I will lead you on a personal journey to discover the unique mind-body psychosomatic map of your life. You will get a detailed report and a personal 45-minute consultation with me that is worth thousands.

I’m going to help you design a life that works so you are able to say yes to the things that matter and eliminate everything else that slows you down. The clearer you can be about how to organize your daily life to support your bigger vision, the more you step into your true potential, stay on track and accomplish all that you want and deserve. Are you ready to make that happen? Feel free to reach out for me to ask questions at AskDrSun.com. Your life is a gift, design it. Do what matters and join me each week as we get closer to designing the life of your dreams. Join me next time on Your Life by Design.

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