These famous words are attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, but they are the historian Will Durant's interpretation of a paragraph of Aristotle's writings, and I did not believe these words for most of my life.
I have always refused to follow habits and routines because I didn't want to feel like I had to live my life according to other people's rules, but I wanted to be special and do something special. Besides, following a routine was hard work for me. However, I discovered that the lack of a certain routine or order for my life drained me more mentally, physically, and emotionally than any routine.
When I didn't do the things that I knew would make me a better person, like exercise, meditate, and write a gratitude diary, I deprived my body and mind of the energy these positive activities provided.. I was exhausted heart and soul, and to make matters worse, my dreams and goals were dissipating before my eyes.
So, a few years ago, I decided to take a different path and to work towards differentiation in my life by following a positive daily routine. After creating and sticking to my own daily practices, I was not only more productive, but I felt a huge improvement as well.
Why Do You Need a Routine?
You must first be convinced of the importance of establishing a routine in your life. Creating a positive daily routine is a way to improve yourself and present your best self to the world around you. It also provides additional benefits as it gives you a clear structure for your life, habits that advance you, and motivation on the days when you feel like you don't have enough strength.
Following a daily routine can help you set priorities, reduce procrastination, track goals, and may even improve your health since it reduces your need for will and motivation because habits, as Tynan, author of Superhuman by Habit says, are “actions that you always perform with little or no thought and effort.”
Today, I have more drive, motivation, and passion. This makes reaching my goals easier, more satisfying, and I have more physical and mental energy to get through my days. Even those very difficult days that still appear from time to time, I feel happy and satisfied with the quality and meaning of my life.
However, I admit that it is not always easy to establish good habits, as author and motivational speaker Brian Tracy says: “Good habits are hard to form, but easy to live with, while bad ones are easy to form, but hard to live with.”
Here's an Important Thing to Remember:
What works for someone else may not work for you, so you should choose the activities that inspire you the most, and the ones that push you to become the best version of yourself.
Don't be afraid to try new habits to see if they work for you. If they make you feel energized and inspired, keep following them. If they don't, keep trying new things until you find what works for you. The key is to establish regular, consistent daily patterns that will take you where you want to go in life, and help you improve yourself on all levels.
Now, let's talk about some of the things that you can follow in your daily routine to reach higher levels of mental clarity and mental strength. A successful daily routine helps you stay focused from the moment you wake up in the morning until you close your eyes and head to dreamland at night.
Here Are Some Tips:
1. Start the Day with a Positive Mantra:
Positive thinking helps relieve stress and even improve your health, according to the Mayo Clinic center.
“Today will be the best day.” I begin each day by saying that simple sentence out loud as soon as I get out of bed. Even I tell myself that in the morning after sad nights, or when I wake up feeling the weight of the whole world on my shoulder. This is because these words give me the right way of thinking to face the day ahead.
What makes a day good or bad is not the events that take place in it, but your response to them, as the American businessman Jim Rohn once said: “You either control the day, or it controls you.” So, I want to immediately improve my state of mind because it will tell me the wrong things unless I restrain it, and it is through positive thinking that I can overcome it.
Ben Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the United States of America used to ask himself this question every morning: “What good will I do today?” Choose a phrase or question that makes sense to you. It might be something as simple as a smile, or saying “thank you” out loud, thanking yourself for having the grace to live another day.
2. Be Proactive, Don't Check Your Email First:
When you wake up in the morning, do you immediately check your email, or your social media accounts? If so, you start your day with reactions without any initiative.
"The problem with this approach is that it makes you spend the best part of your day working on other people's priorities," author Jocelyn K. Glei writes in her book Manage Your Day-to-Day.
For example, if you receive an email asking you to submit work-related documents, you may have to submit them immediately, even though you may have plans to work on marketing your own business. Even if you open Facebook and see one of your friends in crisis, this becomes your focus, potentially preventing you from focusing on your problems and fears.
So, start your days by focusing on yourself and you will be in a much better state of mind, as this will allow you to help others and achieve more during the day.
3. Visualize Your Success:
Some of the world's greatest athletes envision their success to mentally prepare themselves to excel in their sport. Aaron Rodgers, considered by many to be the NFL's best quarterback, spoke about the power of visualization in an interview with The New York Times. USA Today:
“In sixth grade, the trainer taught us the importance of visualizing our success. When I’m in a meeting, watching a movie, or lying on bed before I sleep, I always visualize the passes I’m going to pass, and many of the passes I made in the game I had already thought of, I visualized them while I was lying on the couch."
American author Jack Canfield suggests visualizing your success for 10 minutes a day in order to harness the power of your subconscious mind. Close your eyes, visualize yourself excelling and living your best, visualize yourself in the situations where you excel, visualize the best possible outcome, put as much detail as possible into your visualizations, using all of your senses, and make your training more powerful.
For those who find it difficult to visualize in this way, get a pen and paper and write down how you want your day to go. Be as precise as possible, and make sure to keep it positive. The goal of all this is to transfer commands from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind wants to believe what you say, good or bad, and will do whatever it takes to turn those commands into reality.
4. Read a Book, Even One Page at a Time:
Reading books offers many scientifically proven benefits. According to research conducted by Emory University, reading can boost your intelligence and mental strength for up to five days, and even enhance your empathy for others. It was also found that reading reduces the risk of Alzheimer's disease by more than double, and helps you feel more relaxed at the same time.
Joshua Becker, the author of the bestselling book “Simplify”, has made reading a book every week as a goal because reading makes him a better leader, broadens his worldview and knowledge base, and enhances self-discipline.
But I struggle to find time to read an entire book. Who has hours in a day or week to sit and read all the time?
So, I commit to reading one chapter each day of a book of my choosing, and I read two different books at the present time. I choose the one I find closest to what I ordered on that day, and I sit down and read one chapter of it, and I may read more if I have a desire for that.
By breaking down the big goal (reading an entire book) into a more actionable process (reading one chapter), I can read about 50 books each year.
5. Be Responsible, Find a Partner or a Mentor:
I have a mentor I call every day, so even if all I do is leave a message for them, this simple task makes me feel responsible and forces me to keep myself and my mind in a positive state.
If you don't currently have a mentor, think about it, or at least find someone you trust and can be your partner in responsibility, someone who reminds you of your obligations. Motivational speaker Eric Thomas believes that responsibility partners are so important to success that they have changed his life, he says:
“The day you find someone who is as passionate about your goal as you are and who reminds you of your responsibility will be the day you take your first permanent steps towards success. Committing to your goal in front of a responsible partner will make this achievement possible in a realistic way.”
Thomas recommends making a list of three people you trust and respect. Have a conversation with each of them, discuss exactly what you want to achieve, and after the conversation decide which of these individuals would be the best responsibility partner for the specific goal you are trying to reach.
Quick suggestion: Make sure both parties stand to gain from it, says author Ryan Holiday:
“You have to give something in return as well, anything even if it is just positive energy or even just thanks and gratitude. You cannot ask over and over again and do not expect to give anything in return. The greater the reward you can give, the longer they will support you. Find out what you can offer and give. Here's an extra tip: Find articles and books related to their field, and give them some recommendations so they don't have to waste their time researching."
6. Write, Be Creative:
Spending some time writing every day improves your ability to communicate and remember important information, and boosts your creativity. Write in diary form, and you will also benefit from it to increase your self-understanding.
The first thing I do every morning is writing the morning pages, a practice pioneered by the writer Julia Cameron, as it helps me clear my mind and understand what I want from life in a clearer way. To write your morning pages, you only need to sit down and write three pages. These pages may be about anything you want, just write every day.
I write 10 ideas, a concept I learned from James Altucher, author of Choose Yourself, and the goal of this exercise is to activate your brain and stimulate creative thinking, they can be big ideas (like how to cure cancer) or small ideas (such as ways to stop your cat from scratching furniture).
They say that everyone comes up with at least one idea in their lifetime that could make a million dollars, and you might find your idea on this list.
7. Write a Daily To-Do List:
A great way to get fully prepared for the next day is to make a to-do list. I plan up to six tasks that I want to complete during the day. This method works for two reasons:
First, it helps me plan my day in a way that allows me to get the most out of it, rather than just doing random tasks hoping the day is over.
Second, creating a to-do list keeps me focused on knowing exactly what I want to do and when, and what motivates me to do it.
Keep your daily to-do list small, so that it remains doable and not overwhelming. A great trick to make sure you keep your lists simple is to use small scraps of paper because their small dimensions will force you to write down only the most important things you have to do each day.
Do not write more than six tasks on your list, as these tasks should be the most important ones. In addition, when you complete a task and cross it off the list, it inspires you to keep moving forward and get more done.
8. Take Frequent Breaks During the Day:
All of these tips are meant to help you progress and achieve, but sometimes you need to take a step back and give your mind a break.
Taking frequent breaks prevents you from getting bored and losing focus, which improves your mental performance at the same time, and forces you to re-evaluate what you are working on, and this ensures that you are heading in the right direction.
I've found that the Tomato Technique, an invaluable technique in helping me maintain my energy levels and force me to take regular breaks. This revolutionary time management system is very easy to learn, yet truly life-changing when applied right.
Here Are Quick Tips for How It Works:
- Choose only one task at a time.
- Set the timer for 25 minutes.
- Work on your task until the timer goes off, then mark the timer.
- Take a five-minute break, you've just completed your first tomato (task).
- Repeat the previous four tips three more times, followed by a 15-minute break.
By using this technique, I am now able to complete tasks that would normally require 40 hours in just 16.7 hours, while keeping my energy levels more stable and avoiding burnout.
And speaking of rest periods, while you are relaxing and giving your mind a chance to rest, why not close your eyes and get some sleep?
According to the National Sleep Foundation, taking short naps for 20 to 30 minutes may help improve your mood, alertness, and even performance.
9. Break Down Your Day into Parts:
Breaking down your day into parts helps you stay at your best. Spending too much time doing one thing can lead to a loss of focus and interest, and if you're working on something you don't want to do, it makes it easier because you only have to do it for a short time.
Tim Ferris, author of The 4-Hour Workweek, is an expert in this field because he plans his daily schedule in a way that doesn't keep him busy with the same task for too long. Here's Tim's typical day:
- 10 am: Breakfast.
- 10:30 am to 12 pm: Radio interviews and inventing ideas.
- 12 noon: Exercise.
- 12:30: Lunch.
- 1:00 to 5: Writing, but not all the time.
- 5:30: Dinner.
- 6:30 to 8:30: Exercises.
- 9: Another dinner.
- 10: An ice bath.
- 11 pm to 2 am: Relax.
Some Important Points From Tim:
- No two days are ever the same.
- Spend as much time as possible doing what you want by boosting productivity in less time, and that's the goal every day.
- What really matters is how you invest your time to gain experience.
Now look at your own day and find out how you can break it down into parts, and decide what you need to do to spend your time doing what you want.
10. Divide the Working Days:
Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter and Square, ran both companies at the same time without being exhausted. He achieved this by assigning different tasks to different days of the week, according to the following:
- Monday: Administration.
- Tuesday: Products.
- Wednesday: Marketing and Growth.
- Thursday: Developers and Partnerships.
- Friday: Organizational Culture and Employment.
- Saturday: Day Off.
- Sunday: Thinking and Strategizing.
If you can't devote entire days to dealing with certain problems, you can probably devote certain hours of the day to dealing with them, and that can give you the time you need to make progress in those particular fields, without overburdening your mind.
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