3 Daily Work Habits that Will Transform your Life
I know something about you. I know that you never have enough time.
How often do you go through your day feeling weighed down by the mere thought of all the things you know you should be doing for your business but aren’t?
How often do you go to bed feeling defeated by your lack of progress? Resigned that you just can’t do any more about it today? Clinging to hope that tomorrow might somehow be better?
I understand. I’ve been there, sometimes working late into the night just to try to catch up. Some days I’m still there.
But more often these days I have a very different daily experience, one that enables me to go to bed early and get a good night’s sleep with the rewarding satisfaction of a day well spent.
Over time I’ve learned successful processes that I’ve turned into successful daily work habits. It’s these daily work habits that have made all the difference. Here are the 3 most powerful ones.
1. Guarantee a Successful Day by Lunch
It doesn’t matter if you’re a morning person, a night owl, or something in between. If you can get your most important tasks done early in your day, then everything else falls into place.
Here is what my morning schedule looks like for work days:
- 6:30am — Exercise, meditation, shower & dress
- 7:30am — Get the kids up and ready. Have a family breakfast.
- 8:30am — Plan the day’s priorities.
- 9:00am to noon — Do My ONE Thing. (see #2 below)
This schedule has been absolutely transformational for me.
By lunch time I’ve already had a massively successful day.
Guaranteed.
Why? Because I’ve completed the most important elements of my day. I’ve exercised, meditated, eaten a good meal, spent some precious time with my wife and kids, planned the day’s priorities and completed My ONE Thing.
Sure, I still have much more “to do” in the afternoon. But I’m already set to go to bed that night feeling accomplished, satisfied and ready for a great night’s sleep.
2. Do Your ONE Thing
No matter what your specific goals are, there is always ONE Thing that is most important for you to do next on the path to achieving them.
Doing this ONE Thing now will enable the next ONE Thing to become possible. It will also make everything else easier or unnecessary.
While the proverb says simply that “a journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step”, the direction of each next step is critical.
The ONE Thing is your most important next step in the right direction.
By allocating and protecting a block of time each morning to accomplish Your ONE Thing, you guarantee daily progress towards your most important goals.
While this concept has always been around in various forms, it’s never been presented as convincingly and clearly as in the recent book by Gary Keller titled, coincidentally, “The One Thing”.
Your ONE Thing today should be to read this transformational book.
3. Create Action through Visualization
Unfortunately, simply knowing what we should do next doesn’t mean we’ll do it.
We often get stuck staring at the next prioritized task on our list, and we end up somehow doing something else instead.
The problem is that we are driven by emotions at least as much as we are by logic. To tackle a big task requires first generating sufficient emotional energy to enable forward action.
Here’s a fool-proof technique for getting started on a task.
Commit to spending 3 minutes to do the following:
- Close your eyes.
- Visualize the project at hand as vividly as you can.
- When you can’t stand it any longer, open your eyes and go!
To visualize, picture how the final result will look and feel to you. Imagine the various steps needed to get from here to there. Let your mind tease out the necessary first step, and picture exactly what it entails. Imagine yourself going through all the actions to complete this first step.
I use this technique all the time. I’ve never yet made it to the 3-minute mark.
What you invariably find is that, as you clearly visualize the project and the next step, your body starts itching to get moving on it. Your emotional energy swells until it becomes harder to not start on the task.
Start Your New Daily Work Habits Today!
90% of success in business comes down to one thing: Learning successful processes and then turning them into daily work habits.
It takes about 2 months of daily effort to fully ingrain a new habit, so commit to sticking with it.
Take what you find valuable from my successful processes above to create your own new daily work habits.
And go have a great night’s sleep!
Got any other good work habits? Please share below!
I’m thinking it might take a while or these habits to form but good ideas yes
Yes, some research suggest it takes 66 days of reinforcement for a new habit to fully take hold.
My suggestion is to pick the #1 new habit you most want, spend your 66 days on just that, and once you nail it move on to the next one.