If time is your greatest asset then how do you create a system so that you can achieve optimal results? Let’s keep it simple and talk through a few steps that I have found to help to optimize my day.
We can talk about the longevity of life, 5 or 10-year plans, but our time comes down to now, this moment. You don’t live your life in years you live it in moments and it is what you do with these moments that will determine the value of each day, week, year, and life. How do we get control of these moments and maximize our life NOW? Below are four simple steps that I have found to create my most optimal day, which will lead to my most maximized life:
- Create a Morning Ritual
- Prioritize Your Time
- Planning Your Time
- Evening Ritual
Create a Morning Ritual
“Go out and make it a good day.” – My Father
The beauty of the morning is that it reflects the rebirth of life, another chance to start fresh. How we begin each day will be a precursor for how we live the next hour and 24 hours of our lives. It is in the first minutes of our morning that the pace and possibilities of our day are set. Creating a consistent morning ritual can help ensure that you set yourself up for your most maximized day. There is no right or wrong answer to your ritual. It is whatever steps set you on the path to your most maximized day possible.
Let’s be clear, intentional or not, you have a morning ritual. The concept here is how to intentionally set a ritual that will best position you to maximize your day. Do you wake up at the same time each day? When your alarm goes off do you hit the snooze button? Do you wake, allowing yourself only enough time to dress and run out the door? Or, are you purposeful in your morning activities?
The goal here is for you to align your morning with the activities that will best align you with your values and position you to focus on those areas that are important to you. For me, focusing on my mental and physical well-being before any other activity is critical to the tone of my entire day. If I don’t get mental clarity and workout before anything else my compass is off all day. So, your morning routine is yours. You are empowered to intentionally create the ritual that best maximizes your day.
Being intentional about your morning ritual will allow you to start your day off with a win. When you can check those activities off your list of to-dos, you have a win before your “day” begins. So, as my father always says, go out and make it a good day.
Below is a view of my current optimal morning ritual:
4:00 AM – Wake
4:10 AM – Meditation/Qigong
4:30 AM – Gym
5:30 AM – Protein Shake, Coffee with Butter
5:35 AM – Light Breakfast
5:45 AM – Writing
6:30 AM – Begin my “work” day
You are welcome to steal all or a portion of my ritual. Whatever it takes for you to find your path to your most maximized life.
Prioritize Your Time
“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” – Stephen Covey
Now that you have your morning ritual set and have set out on the path of a maximized day, how do you stay on track? Never forget, this is YOUR time. This is a man in the mirror question. It comes down to asking yourself a few critical questions:
- Who are you? At your core, what values drive your decisions, thoughts and actions? Before you can begin to prioritize your time you must have a destination. When you know where you want to go you can begin prioritizing your day around the activities that will get you there the most efficient way possible.
- Are you focused on YOU first? For most of us the obvious response is, “but my day is controlled by my boss or employer”. Yes, we all have other influences that will pull at our time and some of them are necessary to satisfy. However, focus on YOU first. Create a day where you satisfy the requirements of others while making sure that you are staying true to YOUR course.
- Are you writing this down? There is a psychological effect of writing things down. When written we tend to be more accountable to accomplishing them. When we take pen to paper with our priorities we create a connection from thought to reality. This is your day, week, month, year, life blueprint.
Planning Your Time
“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused energy.” – Paul J. Meyer
You need a plan. If you don’t create a plan for your life, you will be a part of someone else’s plan.
So far you have created a list of your priorities. It is now time to tell each minute what it is going to focus on. What is the best strategy to ensure you maximize your day? For me, after my morning ritual, I begin the next phase of my day with a planning session. I set aside 30 minutes to take a hard look at my priorities and use that as a basis for the activities I MUST tackle each day. A quote by Aristotle, “Well begun is half done”, sums up my philosophy about using planning to maximize your day. Studies have shown that in as little as 10 minutes of planning time you can save 2 or more hours of effort throughout the day.
Below are some simple steps that will help you effectively plan your time.
- Create a schedule. Using a calendar or planner take the priorities that you have set and begin assigning every minute of your day to achieving the critical steps to ensuring you successfully fulfill these priorities. I recommend grabbing a pencil and a piece of paper. There are endless tools for planning but, to start or re-kickstart your daily planning, grab a pencil and a piece of paper. As you create a habit out of planning you can navigate to other tools but nothing will bet a pencil and paper. For me, I use a planning system that provides yearly, monthly, and daily calendar pages to plan. I make sure that every hour of my day is accounted for. Some of my time is set in stone such as my morning ritual.
- Organize. Write down your big rocks that you must clear out of the way for the day. These are the tasks that must be accomplished before the end of the day. These are usually aligned with your priorities. I recommend, no more than 5. Sort your big rocks by level of importance. For this I use a letter/number system. My big rocks are usually all “A’s”. These are items that MUST be tackled that day. Then, I will number those 1, 2, 3, etc., in order of priority for getting those rocks out of my way. So, for my big rocks I will have an A1, A2, A3, A4, A5. Determine how long each rock will take to remove. Beside each of these rocks write down how much time you will need to invest to remove them.
- Don’t forget the pebbles. Life isn’t only about big rocks. There are other tasks that are important and must be accomplished.
- Be Flexible. No day will ever go as planned. Make sure you leave time in your schedule to allow for being flexible as priorities or outside demands change. Always remember, life is a long game. If you can’t conquer your priorities today, you have tomorrow.
Evening Ritual
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
Now that you have created a successful day it is time to unpack and unwind. Up to this point, we have intentionally started our morning in a manner that provided us with clarity and energy. We have set our priorities that focus on our core values and their accompanying goals, we have planned our day so that we can account for every minute of our day in order to maximize our time. We lived our day to the fullest. Now, we need to take time to reflect, refocus and reenergize.
Reflect – How did your day go? Were you able to maintain your focus on your priorities? How often did you get off-track? What pulled you off-track? What went well? Ask yourself these questions with a pen and paper in hand. Take a few minutes to write your observations. Use this to close your day’s chapter, committing to celebrate the wins and committing to improving on areas that you felt were not optimal.
Refocus – For me my refocus starts with a hot shower. This allows me to relax and de-stress. This process has been found to be therapeutic and can help to disconnect us from the noise of the day. I find that following up a hot shower with a few minutes of deep breathing and stretching helps me to recenter my thoughts to a state of relaxation. This helps to bring my heart rate down and prepares me for closing my day out with a zen mindset.
Reenergize – You are like a rechargeable battery. At the end of your day, your batteries as depleted and you need to plug in and begin the process of filling your energy tanks back up. For me, ending my day with my spouse and reconnecting after a full day of activities helps to start my cycle of reenergizing. Disconnect from the outside world. About an hour prior to going to bed, shut off your electronics. Readjust your eyes away from your phone. Science has proven that the blue light emitted from your phone will throw off your circadian rhythm by repressing the production of melatonin. This in turn will make it more difficult to fall asleep and wake up.
We need consistent sleep between 7 and 8 hours each night. I would argue that your evening ritual is the most important part of your day. It will set the tone in preparing you for your morning routine, setting and executing your priorities.