Whenever I was lost and feeling down, my daily routine looked something like this:
Old Daily Routine
- Wake up at whatever time I felt like it. Usually after snoozing the alarm five or six times
- Lay in bed and be afraid to face the world.
- Finally get out of bed and fight through the knot in my stomach as I opened up my email. “What fires did I need to put out today.”
- Looking at my calendar and wondering which meetings were going to cancel on me today. What prospects would tell me would tell me no and what clients would sever our relationship.
- During the day I either would barely eat or get a sub from next door and immediately be in a food coma.
- I’d head home, sit on the couch and watch TV thinking about what take-out I was going to order.
- Finally by midnight, I’d be in bed and “tomorrow I’d be motivated.”
HA! We all know that doesn’t happen.
Does this routine sound familiar? I’m sure we’ve all gone through it at certain points in our lives. While we are living it, we can’t see why things aren’t going well but when we objectively look at it’s extremely obvious why.
We are being negative, pessimistic, just walking through life with no intention whatsoever.
After reading that routine, does that sound fun? Does that look attractive? Can you see why that isn’t effective? OK, Good. Now that we’re on the same page, let’s go through my morning routine now and we can see the difference together.
Current Daily Routine:
- Wake up before 5am — 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 count down and get up before my brain has a chance to tell me to stay in bed.
- Immediately walk over to the coffee maker and make my wife and myself a cup of coffee. I like to start the day off by “giving” even if it’s just a cup of coffee.
- Sit down at my laptop and as it’s powering up, think about all the things in my life that I’m grateful for.
- Review my 5 critical tasks that I need to complete that day. (There will be a separate blog post about this specifically).
- Connect with 200 people on LinkedIn that I consider to be my prospects. That typically takes an hour or so and I include a “personal message.” It’s copy and pasted but addressed to them.
- Drink a protein shake.
- Head to the gym.
- Take all my daily vitamins with breakfast.
- Continue to work through my list of critical tasks.
- Call 2 people that I love and care about and ask how they are doing — making sure to actually listen.
- Eat healthy meals throughout the day that are prepped in advance.
- Talk with my wife to see how her day was and spend time together.
- Plan out my next day.
- Head to bed.
Seems like a lot but it actually isn’t. It has built in wins along the way.
See, where people drop the ball is they think motivation just comes randomly and that’s just not the case. At all.
Motivation comes from momentum. Momentum comes from taking action. And taking action comes from preparing.
See your daily routine isn’t super sexy. It’s monotonous and people don’t think that it’s helpful. But it is. When you no longer have to spend energy focusing on what you have to do that day because it’s so routine, you can refocus that energy to other areas of your life that need the attention. And when you face that area of your life, you’re doing so with a great attitude because of all the positive stuff you’ve been doing day in and day out.
Take some time, plan out your day and actually give AF about following through. You’re not going to feel 100% on day 1 or day 2 or 10 but over time I promise things will get better. I’d be happy to hear your progress so please let me know!
David
