PRODUCTIVITY | MINDSET | LIFESTYLE
A Productive Day Always Starts The Night Before
Here’s how your evening routine can impact your day.
Planning for the following day, the night before is one of my favourite productivity strategies.
It’s something so simple yet so effective.
When you add daily planning into your workflow, you notice the difference in how productive you are but have you ever tried this the night before?
Planning is essential in everything you do.
Once you get into the habit of implementing planning your day the night before, you’ll soon notice how quickly you’re able to jump into your day, full of energy.
You may be thinking….
Hmm, I don’t have extra time to spend on planning, I need to be doing!
Trust me, planning your day the night before will give you that time back, reduce your stress levels and make you feel on top of things in no time at all.
Benefits of implementing planning for your day, into your nightly routine? Here are the best reasons!
Improved sleep
Planning will help you worry less and in turn make you sleep better. One of the main causes of insomnia is due to overthinking and worrying. Planning ahead will leave you more headspace to relax, making it easier to fall asleep.
Top tip: have a no-screen 30 minutes prior to getting into bed. Read, stretch or meditate instead of scrolling through social media — this will certainly improve your sleep, giving your mind more time to switch off before sleeping.
Immediate Focus Mode
When your day is preplanned, you’re able to jump right into focus mode. You’ll start with being proactive, rather than reactive. You can focus on what is a priority over completing a non-time-sensitive task.
How you start your day often sets the tone for the rest of the day and therefore being productive in the morning will make you feel accomplished and keep you motivated throughout the rest of the day.
Increased Accountability
Plan your day the night before requires you to write your tasks down and when writing things down means you’re committing to those to-dos. Planning makes you hold yourself accountable, it forces you to check back on that to-do list throughout the day and you make sure you’re on track to complete what you set out to do that day.
Keeping check of your to-do list throughout the day will help to keep you on track, making you more and more productive each day.
Work-life balance
Planning your day the night before is a nice way to wrap up your workday and start your evening routine (outside of work) and so getting the balance here is important. You can schedule personal to-dos as well as work to-dos. How many times have you forgotten to pick up certain things from the supermarket? Plan ahead by adding them to your to-do list.
When you reach the end of your workday, you are aware of what didn’t get done and what needs to get done tomorrow — so write this down so you’re ready to go tomorrow.
It’s often easier to schedule your next to-dos when everything is still fresh in your mind — planning ahead lets you avoid that feeling of having so much to do!
Planning your day shouldn’t take up too much of your time, especially if you have an efficient system set up so you should still be able to fit this in at the end of your workday, even if you’re drained!
Productivity workflow is finding a system that works for you — so try new things and find what works best for you.
Find a way to make this work, you can either write down on paper what you want to do the next day or simply mark your to-dos in your calendar — it doesn’t matter how you do it, just make sure they get done!
Remember, a productive day always starts the night before.
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