How To Design Your Day To Create Magic
What does an ideal day look like for you? In this exercise, you will design your ideal day from the moment you wake up until you go to bed.
Each day you start is the beginning of a fresh start. If you want to change your lives for the better, you need to start making positive changes today. Today is the day that you make a difference.
Imagining and visualizing your ideal day is a great exercise to improve the quality of your life. This exercise helps you to be intentional and clear about what you really want from your life.
If you want to be happy, satisfied, and fulfilled, you need to start looking inside yourself. What does your heart desire? To understand it, start with one day. One day at a time.
Exercise: Make an inventory of your best days and worst days
Before you start imagining your ideal day, I want you to think about your best days and your worst days.
- Think of 3 really good days that you have recently had. What are the common patterns across these best days?
- Think of 3 really bad days that you have recently had. What are the common patterns across these worst days?
- What differentiates good days from bad days? Make a list of top factors that make a good day.
- Diary studies show that making progress is the single most important factor that differentiates good days from bad days. Reflect on your sample days and how you make sense of these factors.
- If you are intentional about designing an ideal day, what insights or lessons can you take from the exercise above?
Exercise: Imagine and design your ideal day
Find a quiet space now and relax. Get a notebook and a pencil. Imagine your ideal day. From the moment you wake up till you go to bed. What would your ideal day look like? How does it feel?
Describe and write your day in detail. The more specific you get, the better. When you are very clear and precise about what you want, you send a clear signal to your subconscious and your brain. You have specific targets that you will aspire to. You can then challenge and stretch yourself towards these targets.
Go Deeper
After you write down your initial thoughts, respond to the following questions:
- How would you be creative and productive on this day? Which projects would excite you? What do you want to achieve? What are the actions you will take to make progress on your projects? Imagine the creative environment and the office that you will create your best work in.
- How would you make sure you take care of yourself and your family/beloved ones? How will you spend time with them? What will you eat for dinner? Think about the atmosphere and the scenery. Think of how you can create sweet memories.
- What would you do? How would you spend your time? What are the things that would keep you excited?
- Imagine the ideal people that you want to work with. Who would you like to be surrounded by?
- How will you experience a creative flow state? How will you work on your creative assets and long-term goals?
- How will you move and keep fit? Will you spend some time on outdoor activities or hobbies? How can you incorporate fun, surprise, and adventure into your day? How will you make sure you spend some time on relaxing and refreshing activities?
- What would you not include in this day? What are the things that you want to avoid? (Being in a rut or being in stress, being stuck in traffic, endlessly scrolling down social media, following the news, six hours of binge-watching, etc.) Be clear about what you want to eliminate.
- Make sure you incorporate your most powerful emotions and visualization into this exercise. Please feel free to draw or doodle or write non-stop for 15–20 minutes. You can also dump your brain or brainstorm. Or, you can create a concept map or a mind map — as you wish. Whatever works best for you.
Capture your learning now
After you complete the exercise, try to look at the patterns that emerge.
- What did you realize or learn?
- What are some of the small actions that you can incorporate into your days to make them better?
- How can you make your days better by being more intentional and strategic?
- How can you create a personal system of creativity and productivity you can use every day so that you develop positive habits that compound over time?
- How can you blow your mind every day? How can you turn today into a very memorable, exciting, and productive day? How can you instill elements of joy, fun, adventure, progress, and accomplishment into your day?
- Respond to the questions above and create at least 5 ideas.
- You can start with small positive actions and you can incorporate them into your life right away.
- You can get closer to your ideal life through a series of small steps. You do not need big radical changes. You can make a 1% change every day. These small changes will compound over time and they will bring you much closer to your ideal day.
Suggestions for improving your days
- Do not attempt to achieve 10 things on a given day. Do less. Identify what matters for the long term and why. Say no to all the other things. After you are absolutely clear on your priorities, it will become easier for you to achieve your most important tasks on any given day.
- Identify your most strategic priorities for your day. Do not have more than 3 priorities. What are your top 3 most important tasks?
- Figure out how you can add tremendous value. What can you do right now, that requires the smallest amount of effort, and will have the largest amount of impact? If you figure it out and act on it every day, you will be in a much better position in just a couple of years.
- Scare yourself every day. If you follow your comforts, you will over-eat, over-indulge, feel lazy, and bored to death at home. You need to get out of your comfort zone in order to grow. Challenging yourself every day positively impacts your mood, health, and wellbeing.
- Design your days by surprise. Leave a bit of room for flexibility, serendipity, exploration, and adventure as you start each day. Embrace the chaos and the unknown — they are your friend. Losing yourself is one of the best ways in this life to get creative.
- Learning is your superpower. Spend one hour every day to learn new things that will excite you. These things do not need to be related to your work or field. Think about whatever you love. Follow it, be curious, dream about it, go deeper, take action, keep learning, and share your learning with the world. See yourself as a work of art — always learning and growing, and always in progress. Reinvent yourself by creating new things and doing lots of experiments. What will you learn today that will excite you?
- Invest a small amount of time into what you love every day, one day at a time. Project forward into the future how much progress you would make if you invested this time every day for one year. Compound yourself for the long term.
- Schedule ample time for learning activities to nurture your mind and spirit. Take care of your brain and improve your learning habits. Develop positive habits, systems, and assets to take control of your own future.
- Aim for a flow experience every day. In the words of Einstein: “That is the way to learn the most, that when you are doing something with such enjoyment that you don’t notice that the time passes.”
- The only time you have is right now. Create or write today like there is no tomorrow. Creating your creative assets is the best way forward to be happy, productive, and rich in your life. What do you care about? What do you wish to create? Do you want to write a book? Do you want to establish your own online business? Do you want to create your YouTube channel? Do you want to create your Instagram brand? Do you want to create your music? Start acting on it today. Start it right now — like in 10 seconds. The only time you have it is right now. Your life is short and you might not have another chance tomorrow. The only day you have it is today.
- Keep a journal to capture your best ideas, memories, and reflections. Do not live on autopilot and deepen your self-awareness. Write down your worries, hopes, emotions, experiences, or observations to check in with yourself. Congratulate yourself on the small things you have achieved, such as showing up, writing 100 words, or making some progress on your project.
Every day has the potential to be magical but you cannot just wait passively for the magic to come to you. You need to go beyond your comfort zone, design challenges for yourself, go on adventures, and create your own magic.
