A search for the perfect daily routine

The most important part of your day is when you just wake up in the morning. If you’re rolling out of bed after hitting snooze a dozen times, you’re doing it wrong.

Your morning routine can set you up for a successful day. You can choose to linger in bed while dreading the alarm, or you can set yourself up for productivity and success with the introduction of a simple routine that will set the tone for everything you’ll accomplish that day.

Working remotely and being self-employed has many advantages to the quality of life, but it does introduce certain challenges, especially when moving often and working from different cities and workspaces. When you are your own boss it is important to keep a discipline to become more productive at work on one side but also to live a healthy life on the other. To do this, it can help to introduce some routine to everyday life, as discussed by people like Tim Ferris, Tony Robbins, and Hal Elrod.

After digging into the science behind daily routines and learning about daily routines of successful people I have experimented to figure out what works the best for me. While not all of the same stuff will work for you, hopefully, it can help to build your own routine which can take only a few minutes per day but have a great impact on your life.

MORNING (after waking up)

1. Drink 2 glasses of water (1 min)
2. Don’t check email and social media for 1 hour after waking up (put the phone in airplane mode)
3. Yoga and stretching (5 mins)
4. Bodyweight workout (10 mins)
5. Breakfast, morning shake and multivitamins (15 mins)
6. Brush your teeth (2 mins)
7. Practice deep breathing, meditate (10 mins)
8. Write the morning journal (5 mins): 3 things that I am grateful for… 3 things that would make today great…Daily affirmations, I am…
9. Define 3 most important goals for today (1 min)
10. (OPTIONAL) What is bothering me now the most? Spend 1h solving the problem

DURING THE DAY

1. Set a timer and work in 50min increments while taking care of your posture. Take 10-min breaks in between.
2. If having stress STOP and do 10 mins of meditation.
3. When there is a problem: What is great about this problem? What is not perfect yet? What am I willing to do to make it the way I want it? What am I willing to no longer do? How can I enjoy the process while I do what is necessary to make it the way I want it? What if this experience is, in fact, a good thing for me?
4. If adding a new habit, schedule it and measure the progress: What gets scheduled gets done. What gets measured gets done.

EVENING (before sleep)

1. Brush your teeth (2 mins)
2. Write the evening journal (3 mins): 3 amazing things that happened today… How could I have made today better?
3. Answer evening power questions (2 mins): What have I given and in what ways have I been a giver today? What did I learn today? How has today added to the quality of my life? Did I exercise, sleep 8 hours, and eat well? When walking outside, did I wish all beings I encounter loving-kindness?
4. Read a fiction book (30 mins)