“Your future is found in your daily routine. Successful people do daily what others do occasionally!” – Paula White
Take a moment and look at your day. How was it? Was it similar to the day before… and the day before that?
Did you do anything differently? Do you know where your time went or did you just wing it throughout the day?
If you wish to be successful in business and in life, your daily routine is the key indicator of whether you are on the right track or not. So many people wish to be successful and have big goals, but they change nothing in their daily routine.
They expect results by magic. It does not work that way.
There is a famous quote by Aristotle – “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”
What you repeatedly do is your daily routine.
If you are overweight, you are probably eating too much daily. If you feel lethargic, you might not be exercising daily. If your finances are abysmal, you might be overspending daily.
- What’s your daily routine like?
It would help if you went through your daily routine with a fine-toothed comb. Ideally, during the first week, you should keep a journal where you write down whatever it is you do every single hour.
Yes, you will track your activity by the hour. Over a week, you can see where you are wasting time and where you’re being focused. You will also discover that you are a creature of habit. We all are.
Ask yourself if your habits are helping you or hurting you. If you are binge-watching Netflix shows late into the night and not getting enough sleep… is that habit hurting you?
Of course, it is. You will need to limit yourself to an hour of TV a day. Or maybe watch no TV from Monday to Thursday. You will have to decide for yourself what goes into your daily routine.
- What will you do to help yourself?
Do you have big goals? Excellent. Now, what will you do daily to bring your goals to fruition?
If you wish to publish a book on the Kindle marketplace, you know you need to write the book first. When will you write it? What time will you sit down to write? How long will you write for? Do you have a word count to meet?
If you decide to start writing from 8 am to 10 am every morning, now you have a routine! That is fantastic. If you stick to it and write 2,000 words a day, in 30 days, you would have written 60,000 words.
Guess what? That is the length of a novel.
Now, do you see how having a daily routine that is in alignment with your goals will get you to where you want to go?
- Benefits of a daily routine
The example above is simple. You may decide to walk for 30 minutes every day (from 10 am to 10.30 am) after you finish writing. Now you are getting daily exercise. That will reap rewards over time.
If you have a day job, you will need to factor in your commute, hours at work, how much free time you have, and so on. Then do the best you can with what you have.
One of the benefits of a daily routine is that it wakes you up to the fact that your time is limited. You will be more productive and less inclined to waste time on irrelevant activities.
A daily routine will reduce anxiety and keep you on track. You will be focused and less likely to procrastinate. When you repeat the same routine every day, each activity will become a habit.
Now, compliance with your daily routine will be easier. Tasks that you used to detest will become more bearable and you will be faster at what you do.
Plan your day well and create a routine that fits in with your lifestyle. Initially, try not to do too much too soon or it will be a rude shock for you. You will want to gradually ease into your routine. As you get accustomed to it, you can challenge yourself to do more.
Last but not least, do not look at a daily routine as something which curbs your freedom. In fact, the opposite holds true. With a good daily routine, you will get more work done in a shorter time because of increased productivity and no time lags in between tasks.
So you will be spending less time working and have more free time while still progressing steadily towards your goals. This is a win-win situation. Create a routine today and stick to it. You will be stunned at how fast you progress and achieve success.
“A daily routine built on good habits and disciplines separates the most successful among us from everyone else. The routine is exceptionally powerful.” – Darren Hardy
