3 Secret Ingredients to a Productive Day (Honest Opinion)
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are not endorsed by ViviDream.
You may be surprised to hear this, but to start your day off right, you need to start planning for it the day before.
In this article, I’ll cover THREE specific things that help make my days more productive: starting from the night before all the way to breakfast.
At the end, I’ll also provide some additional thoughts on each method presented, as well as how you can use them in your own day.
So let’s start. Firstly…
1) The so-called “Ivy Lee” goal-setting method.
Each evening, I’ll take a couple minutes to write up to 6 goals for the next day. They are highly short-term goals, usually part of a much larger picture I have set for myself.
After getting these daily goals out on paper, I’ll sort them by priority, so that tomorrow I could work on each one until it’s done. No excuses.
But writing a to-do list and highly focusing on it are just part of the puzzle, at least for me. Another key part is…
2) DeepAsleep, a natural sleeping supplement produced by ViviDream.
Before finding out about this product through a friend, I used to have a terrible falling-asleep period. It was taking me 1–3 hours to actually fall asleep. I was even jealous of my grandpa and how he was always able to fall asleep just after 5 minutes of laying down… until I discovered DeepAsleep.
The first time after taking the supplements, they actually had an opposite effect on me. Which means I slept for less than normally, as opposed to more, which was promised by the company.
But after a couple nights of using the product consistently, I was actually having more peaceful falling-asleep periods, as well as waking up rested like a baby.
That in turn allowed me to do my morning routine with full-force, instead of just slugging it.
And this morning routine is the final part of my puzzle.
3) A Consistent Morning Routine.
This is a bit of a weird one, really.Not in the fact that I jump out of bed ASAP and do 100 push-ups. Nope, it doesn’t work like that for my body.
But what does work for me is gradually waking up.
All the way from first seeing the sun’s rays to actually getting up and having breakfast.
What comes in between is about 20 minutes of focused reading, 15–45 minutes of inspirational or interesting YouTube videos, and some 10–20 minutes of writing.
The way I write in bed is just by using my notes app, and then pasting the drafts into WordPress later in the day when I’m by the computer.
You have to have a clear morning routine.
My Thoughts On The Morning Routine.
Now, a lot people have rather unique morning routines so that last part might not be as useful to you.
But what is important to take from it, is that you have to HAVE an actual morning routine. It should be something that relaxes you, prepares you for the day, and ideally helps you move forward in life.
Some of the activities you could add to your routine are:
- Meditating
- A cup of tea or coffee
- Reading a book
- Listening to educational YouTube videos
- A shower
- Walking in nature
- Jogging around the block (if you’re far away from nature)
- Writing
Conversely, some of the activities that you SHOULDN’T add to it are:
- Watching/reading the news
- Browsing social media
- Answering e-mails
- Going back to sleep
I’m not judging you if you’re doing any of these “shouldn’t” things.
For a long time, I did them as well, using petty excuses as to why it was a good way to spend the first hours of my day. But it does NOT work. I learned it the hard way.
I used to spend 1–2 hours in bed glued to my Facebook feed, under the excuse that I want to see everything that’s happened while I was sleeping. But 99% of those things weren’t adding any value to my life…
My Thoughts On Setting Goals.
Anyway, to go back to my 1st “ingredient”: goal-setting.
In my opinion, that is something that everyone should do…and hear me out why.
Because goals are like adding a rudder to your own ship. Without it, you’d just wander aimlessly through the ocean of life and never arrive anywhere, except for maybe the bottom of the ocean.
But with a quality rudder, you can conquer all your personal seas.
I may be getting a bit too metaphorical here, but the point I’m making is that goals will give your life purpose way beyond your typical 9–5.
A lot of people also say that setting goals is kind of like playing a video game.
You wonder how can that be?
Well, let me break it down for you.
If you’re playing an RPG (role-playing game), you’ll always have quests and objectives on your journal — your in-game to-do list.
Depending on the actual game, these “quests” can take anywhere from a few hours, to 100's upon 100’s of days to finish.
Just like you cannot really finish World of Warcraft, you can never finish ALL your goals.
Even when you think you’ve completed EVERY single quest, every goal you’ve set for yourself — a new expansion, a new chapter of your life arrives.
But the joy is not in accomplishing these goals, it’s in actually doing them.That’s why we play video games, and that’s why we set goals in our lives.
My Thoughts on DeepAsleep.
And lastly, to help you have a productive day, I can also whole-heartedly recommend ViviDream’s products, especially DeepAsleep.
They’re currently having a clearance sale so if you wanna try it out, I suggest you go there right away
(Original article written by Bogdan Cekerevac: https://vividream.com/3-secret-ingredients-productive-day-honest-opinion/)