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Productive Nightly Routines To Borrow From Remarkably Successful People
To Sleep Or Not To Sleep
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Family, Reflection and Email
Balancing work obligations with meaningful family time is an important part of building a successful evening routine.
An evening routine starts with family time. Tackle some to-do’s later on from your dedicated workspace. Leave some time for unstructured brainstorming or reflection too.
Practice Good Sleep Hygiene
Take steps to make it easier to sleep well.
- Avoid caffeine, alcohol, or other drugs for several hours before bed
- Set a regular bedtime
- Drink some warm milk or herbal tea, or have a light snack
- Try a screen-free activity like meditation or reading
- Eliminate as much noise from your bedroom as possible
- Keep your bedroom dark
- Don’t linger too long in bed. It’s better to do your lounging on the couch and head for bed only when it’s time to sleep.
To Sleep Or Not To Sleep
Get Creative
Try spending some time on creative work every night for a week or two. If the muse seems to appear more often, you may have found a shortcut to creative inspiration.
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Benefits of an evening routine
Haphazard evening routines can have serious effects on our sleep.
The right evening routine helps us wind down, relax, and get into a deep, restorative sleep—making us refreshed and ...
The science of sleep
When we close our eyes for the night, our mind cycles through different stages of sleep:
- Light sleep: Which is most similar to being awake
- REM (or Rapid-Eye-Movement): Where our minds are asleep but active and where dreams are most likely to happen
- Deep sleep: Where our mind is in “regeneration” mode
So many things can get in the way of us reaching deep sleep, from stress and burnout to late-night screen usage, eating late, and physical issues. To make sure we reach our deep, restorative sleep, we need a proper evening routine.
Create a “closing ritual”
For most of us it is the mind, rather than the body, that disrupts restorative sleep.
To cleanse our mind of the leftover responsibilities of the day, we need to bring a mental wind down into our evening routine.
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Why a Night Routine Matters
A night routine is the things you do immediately prior to going to bed.
Three benefits of having a decent night routine:
- You’ll have a more restful and higher-quality sleep....
Before You Head Home…
- Get rid of caffeine after 4:00 pm. Caffeine stays in your system for up to six hours.
Stay hydrated. Dehydration can make you feel sluggish and tired when you want to be awake.
Decide when the workday ends. Establish a cut off time for work-related emails and phone calls as well.
Immediately After Work…
- Avoid alcohol. Alcohol may make you drowsy, but the sleep you get won’t be restful. Stop consuming it at least two hours before bed.
Have a healthy dinner.
When you need a snack closer to bedtime, reach for something light and healthy.
Take time to tidy. Waking up in an orderly space will work wonders for your mood.
Prepare for tomorrow.
When you don’t have a million things to do upon waking, it’s easier to fall asleep.- Take time for yourself. Perhaps you watch an episode of your favorite show or play video games.
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The Brain as a Snowy Hill
The snowy hill represents the brain, the people sledding are like the memories, and the trails left behind are the synapses in the brain.
Think of the brain as a hill covered in snow, ...
Memory Palace/The Method of Loci
- Choose a place that you know really well.
- Plan the route and pick specific locations in your route.
- Decide what you want to memorize
- Place an object or two, with a mental image, and place them in your memory palace. Exaggerate your images. For example, use nudity or crazy images forcing it to stick in your mind.
- Make the image into a mnemonic
Mnemonics
A memory device that helps you retain and retrieve information simply with the use of retrieval cues to encode information in the brain.
- List the words you want to remember.
- Write the initials of each word vertically.
- Create a sentence/phrase using the initials.
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The problem with staying up late
Long days can leave us tired and exhausted. But, our days would be less hard and exhausting if we weren't so tired through them.
Most night owls have to wake a similar time to other people...
Learn to love a good night's sleep
When trying to change your sleep habits, don't give up too soon. Keep it up for a week. The days will get easier, and you'll learn to love sleep again.
To get to bed earlier, slow down in the evenings. Read a book rather than engaging with your smartphone or laptop. Listening to music is good too.
Have something to get up for
Schedule something fun or desirable to look forward to in the morning before work.
It could include coffee, the news, gym or uninterrupted smartphone access.
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Morning routines
Of all the different things you can try to improve your productivity, a morning routine is one of the most effective:
- It gets you started and sets the tone for the upcoming day; ...
Sleep and productivity
When it comes to productivity, getting enough sleep is essential. Any morning routine you develop needs to accommodate your sleeping rhythms.
And research indicates that 7-8 hours per day is a nearly universal requirement.
Different goals, different routines
There isn’t one perfect routine that will make you rich and happy overnight. Instead, there’s different routines for different purposes: if you're focusing on health and fitness, starting with exercise or eating a healthy breakfast might go first. If you're working like crazy, getting straight to work on your most important tasks may be better than cluttering up my morning with different tasks.
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Routines reduce mental fatigue
They tell your brain what’s expected of it:
- They reduce decision fatigue and that fight-or-flight stress that can get in the way of taking act...
Building routines for the non-work parts of the day
When you have a pre-existing routine, it’s easier to fit work into it when it arises.
If you’re working from home on a regular basis, it’s good to get into a habit of showering and getting dressed, because it provides some parameters that say, ‘Work day has begun!’
Work structure
Develop a reserve of cues that tell your brain it’s time for work and outline a structure you can tap into whenever you need to get down to business.
For example, work from the same place (and do nothing but work there) or listen to the same music or background noise.
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The internal clock
All individuals possess what is called 'an internal clock', which has as main purpose to schedule sleep and wakefulness within one entire day of 24 hours.
Now comes the difference in re...
Get enough sleep in unusual times
Whenever we undergo a change in our daily schedule, our sleep tends to suffer a bit.
Simple facts such as not waking up and going to bed at the usual hour, not getting enough natural light or making less to no exercise can lead to sleep disorders.
Save your sleep
Especially during times of staying only in the house, one needs to make sure that the regular schedule is not too much disturbed, as this can lead, among other issues, to sleep disorders.
A good way to get your normal sleep is by maintaining a regular wake-up and bedtime, even through unusual periods of time. Furthermore, ensuring that your room gets enough natural light, or even better, that you get it, will definitely help. Among other helpful tips there are the fact of giving up on coffee or making as many indoor physical exercises as possible.
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Early Birds are 15% of the population
About 1 in 2 people have relatively “normal” sleeping habits; they function most optimally when they don’t stay up too late or wake up too early and stick to a consistent sleep schedule.
Successful CEOs who are getting up late
- Aaron Levie, the CEO of enterprise cloud company Box
- Reddit co-founder and husband of Serena Williams, Alexis Ohanian - gets up around 10 am
- Pharrell Williams doesn't use an alarm to wake himself up; he relies on his body's natural sleep habits
- Mark Zuckerberg gets up around 8 am
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The power of morning routines
- Routines drastically reduce the amount of logistical and psychological friction in between us and our goals.
- Good routines are also powerful motivation generators. In add...
The secret to productive mornings
Forget about getting up insanely early every morning. How much time we have in the mornings is far less important than how we spend the time we do have.
Prep your day the evening before
Reduce the number of decisions and tasks you have to do each morning in between waking up and doing your work:
- Decide on and lay out your clothes for the following day the evening before and gather all other pieces of stuff you need (supplies, equipment).
- Make your breakfast and lunch the night before and have it ready to grab in the fridge.
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How Your Brain Remembers
What we remember about the pleasurable quality of our past experiences is almost entirely determined by 2 things: the emotional peak and the end.
So try to structure your days so that ...
Have a “Shutdown Ritual”
Although the workday is over, your mind is still going strong. You gotta get your brain out of “work mode” to relax.
A simple ritual can help: Straighten up your desk. Back up your computer. Make a list of what you need to do tomorrow.
Turn Weeknights Into Weekends
Weekends are great because we get to spend our time the way we enjoy most.
Spend 2 hours with friends or family and you just turned a dull Tuesday night into a happy Saturday.
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