I’m not always the best sleeper, so I’m tempted to try this and see if I too can have some of “the most pleasing sleep that can be imagined”!
Although Evan used to go to the gym in the mornings, he found that it wasn’t the best natural time for him to be there:
Although Evan’s now leaving the office mid-way through his workday, he’s found that overall it’s been a beneficial change to his routine:
Being Prime Minister is probably one of the busiest lifestyles you can have. Yet, somehow among everything he had to get done, Winston Churchill managed to stick to
I like how much variety Churchill was able to pack into his days, even though he was working for much of them. That’s definitely something I’d like to get better at!
A
morning routine can be particularly important to setting up your day in the best way. Leo Babauta of
Zen Habits shared
his schedule when he began experimenting with the best morning routine for him:
- Wake at 4:30 a.m.
- Drink water.
- Set 3 Most Important Things (MITs) for today.
- Fix lunches for kids and myself.
- Eat breakfast, read.
- Exercise (run, bike, swim, strength, or yardwork) or meditate.
- Shower.
- Wake wife & kids at 6:30 a.m.
Leo’s routine is all about starting his day in the best way possible:
The reason I like having a morning routine is that not only does it instill a sense of purpose, peace and ritual to my day, but it ensures that I’m getting certain things done every morning … namely, my goals.
You’ll notice that one of Leo’s items is a flexible one: exercise or meditate. On Fridays he meditates, rather than exercising, while every other day he does some exercise in the morning.
This flexibility is a great way to work in activities that you want to change based on the day. I’ve recently started running, and to keep my routine close to normal on the days I run, I just interchange my running time with my normal afternoon nap time.
Barack Obama: “Get a head start on tomorrow, tonight”
Like Winston Churchill, Barak Obama is a fan of sharing meals with his family. He eats breakfast with his wife and daughters every morning before helping to get his daughters ready for school. He reads newspapers and does his exercise (weights and cardio) early in the morning, before hitting the Oval Office around 9am.
After his family retires to bed, Obama often stays up working on odds and ends left over from the day. Chief among his nightly responsibilities is leafing through the binder of documents that his staff has asked him to review.
Having this time alone at night gives him time to catch up on work and get ready for the following day, so he can afford to spend his morning exercising and eating with his family.
“I don’t want to make decisions about what I’m eating or wearing,”
he told Michael Lewis. “Because I have too many other decisions to make.”
If anyone’s going to struggle with work/family balance, it would surely be the President of the United States, but he seems to have
a solid routine in place that helps fit everything in each day.
Tim Ferriss: “Keep your routine as flexible as possible”
Tim Ferriss often gets asked what he does all day long. The thing I love about
his routine is that it’s never the same—each day is different, depending on what he has on.
He does have some general rules for organizing his schedule, though: Mondays and Fridays are generally off-limits for phone calls from Tim’s assistants, so he has the flexibility to take a long weekend on either side. He usually does general preparation and prioritizing for the week on Mondays, as well as general admin tasks.
Tim also schedules very few things into his calendar, so that he doesn’t need to stress about multi-tasking to get things done:
The goal is to spend as much time possible doing what we want by maximizing output in minimal time.
Tim’s routine is especially flexible, which I find really inspiring:
I don’t have to do anything in this schedule. I choose to do them because I like them. None of them are financially-driven or unpleasant obligations. If the chance to do something more fun comes up last-minute, I can cancel all of them.
Our 6 best tips for designing your own routine
If you’re ready to get started on your own awesome routine, here are some tips to get you started.
1.) A good breakfast can still be fast and easy
This is a great suggestion from
Lifehacker which can help you get your morning routine going. If you struggle to eat breakfast every day because it’s too much effort or takes too long, this one’s for you.
Preparing your breakfast the night before by getting out the dishes you’ll need or cutting up fruit pieces can save you time the next morning. You might want to opt for a simple meal like cereal to save time and effort as well.
If something more time-intensive like oatmeal is your thing, you can make breakfast for the whole week
in 5 minutes – perfect for a Sunday night before your week starts.
Here are some other fast, easy breakfast recipes you could try:
2.) Do creative work for when you’re tired
Our bodies have
built-in clocks that determine the best times for us to eat, sleep, exercise and work. You might not have the flexibility to do everything at the right time for you, but try listening to your body clock as much as you can.
If you do
better creative work at night, for instance, try to put creative tasks off during the day and schedule more admin or analytical tasks for your mornings.
If you find, like Evan, that exercising is best for you in the middle of the day, you could try doing this during your lunch break or taking a mid-afternoon break from work and hanging back a little later in the evenings.
3.) An alarm to wake you up might not be enough – have one to tell you to go to sleep
Most of us have alarms to wake us up in the mornings but we all-too-easily stay up later than we plan to. Having an alarm
to remind us when it’s bedtime can be a great help in sticking to a regular routine for sleep.
To get you ready to wake up fresh and rested the next day, try simulating natural sleeping patterns as much as possible. An alarm clock
like this that simulates sunrise, or even a gentle alarm sound like birds chirping can help you wake up more gently in the morning. Making your bedroom pitch-black and keeping the temperature low (and consistent) can also help with
a more restful sleep.
4.) Switch yourself off at night to sleep better – the “zero notifications” method
We’re pretty fond of hacking and experimenting with our routines at Buffer, but a nightly wind-down routine is one we pay particular attention to. Many of us have found that this makes a big difference to how much—and how well—we sleep.
Our CEO, Joel, has written about
his own routine before, and I really like how he explains his nightly wind-down habits:
Disengage: An activity to allow total disengagement from the day’s work. For me, this is going for a 20 minute walk every evening at 9:30pm. This is a wind down period, and allows me to evaluate the day’s work, think about the greater challenges, gradually stop thinking about work and reach a state of tiredness.
Avoid re-engaging: After the activity, go straight to bed. Be sure that all devices are in a separate room to the one you sleep (and slient). Once in bed, do not read books which are related to your work in any way. For me, this means reading fiction.
You might want to try a walk, like Joel, or some quiet reading time. Other great wind-down activites include
meditation, drinking tea, sitting quietly, stretching and taking a bath.
Building up a habitual morning routine can help you to start your day in the best way. This is another one
Joel is fond of, and he has a great suggestion for creating a consistent morning routine:
I certainly believe that allowing imperfection and some slack at the weekend is important, but I personally made the mistake of having a weekend wake up time which was too divergent from my week day wake up time. Only once I started to think about the weekend, I hit a chain of many days of early mornings.
I love this point especially, because I’m prone to have big sleep-ins and late nights on weekends, which can make my morning routine much harder to get into on a Monday morning.
It takes time and effort to track everything you over a day. I recently started tracking my weekday activities and noticed that remembering to track each activity is the hardest part for me.
What other tips do you have for improving your daily routine? What does your routine look like right now? Let us know in the comments.
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