Jumpstart your day (the night before) – an evening routine | zen habits. By Leo Babauta Not long ago, I talked about the importance of a morning routine … it’s a great way to incorporate your goals into each day, at the beginning of the day. This is a beautiful time of day, when all is quiet and the world sleeps. But there’s another part of the day that I love, and that can have great benefits for you at a cost of only 10-30 minutes each day: the time right before you go to sleep.
If you’re following my advice on how to become an early riser (and if not, try it out!) , then you are going to be earlier, and perhaps reading yourself to sleep, so you won’t be so tired in the morning. Well, just 10-30 minutes before you go to bed, try going through an evening routine that can make a huge difference for your morning.
Each person’s evening routine will be different, but here’s a sample routine that’s based on something I’ve been trying, with some good ideas that most people can use: Create your evening routine today and get a jump start on tomorrow! Top 20 Motivation Hacks – An Overview | zen habits. By Leo Babauta This article is a list of tips and tricks that, if used in combination, are a nearly sure way to achieve your goals. Achieving goals is not a matter of having “discipline”. It’s a matter of motivating yourself, and keeping your focus on your goal. Follow these tips, or any combination of them that works for you, and you should have the motivation and focus you need.
Here they are: 1. Now, you will have some bad marks on your chart. 2. Well, a great motivator that I’ve learned is that when you have so much energy at the beginning of a program, and want to go all out — HOLD BACK. 3. Each time I joined a forum, it helped keep me on track. 4. Find a magazine photo or a picture online and post it somewhere where you can see it not only daily, but hourly if possible. 5. 6. I have a rule (not an original one) that I just have to put on my running shoes and close the door behind me. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
3 Steps to a Permanently Clear Desk | zen habits. By Leo Babauta Once upon a time, my desk was cluttered with all the things I was currently working on — not to mention dozens of things I wasn’t working on: notes, post-its, phone numbers, papers to be filed, stacks of stuff to work on later. I was too busy to organize it, and if I ever did get it cleared, it would pile up soon after. It’s a different story today. These days, my desk is always clear, except for the one thing I’m working on, and perhaps a notebook and pen for jotting down notes, ideas or to-dos as they come up.
It’s a liberating feeling … it calms me … it reduces stress and chaos … it definitely makes things easier to find … and it makes me more efficient and productive. How did I make the transformation? Much of my current system (as opposed to stuff I’ve been trying along the way) is taken almost completely from “Getting Things Done,” by David Allen (via Lifehacker & 43 Folders). Here’s the system: 1. 2. 3. It’s that simple. Email Zen: Clear Out Your Inbox | zen habits.
Post written by Leo Babauta. I use Gmail exclusively for email, and it constitutes a major part of my two day jobs. I get a fair amount of email each hour, and I am pretty quick at responding. However, one thing you’ll notice about my Gmail inbox is that it is just about always empty. It gives me a Zen feeling to have a clean inbox, a feeling of peace and calm and satisfaction. I highly recommend it to everyone.
I wasn’t always like this — I had many emails in my inbox in the past. They would sit in there, sometimes unread, sometimes just waiting on an action, sometimes waiting to be filed, and others just waiting because I was procrastinating. But GTD changed that (as well as 43 Folders and others), and for nearly a year now, I’ve been fairly consistent about having a clean inbox. Here are my simple steps to achieving Email Zen: 1) Don’t check email first thing in the morning, or have it constantly on. 2) When you check your email, dispose of each one, one at a time, right away.
Ahhh. Big Rocks First: Double Your Productivity This Week | zen habits. Every Monday is Productivity & Organization Day at Zen Habits. If your week is seven buckets, and you go into each bucket without planning ahead, and you fill it up with little pebbles and grains of sand and whatever other debris comes your way … soon there will be no room for the Big Rocks. Your buckets fill up faster than you know it, and once your buckets are full, you’re done. You can’t get bigger buckets.
What you can do is put the Big Rocks in first, and fill in the pebbles and sand around them. The Big Rocks are the major things you want to get done this week. A report, launching a new website, going to the gym, spending time with your spouse and kids, achieving your dreams. Plan your week ahead of time, placing your Big Rocks first. This is a similar concept to MITs, except on a weekly scale instead of a daily scale. Here’s how you do it (with the unavoidable list, of course!)
Make a list. How does this simple method make you more productive? See also: My Morning Routine | zen habits. By Leo Babauta Today I start a new habit: my morning routine (to be honest, I started a couple days ago). All this month I will focus on making my morning routine a daily habit. I’ve actually tried different versions of a morning routine in the past year, and have enjoyed them immensely. I just haven’t stuck with one for a whole month or more, and that is the goal this month.
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. I’m setting aside morning time as a time of peace and quiet, and time to take small steps each day towards my goals. Here’s my morning routine, at the moment (subject to tweaking later): Morning Routine A couple of explanations: The MITs that I set for the day concern at least one item towards one of my goals, and probably the 1-2 things I MUST complete at work.
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