Four Routines You Need In Your Life Right Now.

You’ll notice in our newer Focus Planners that we have a page dedicated to helping you establish your important routines, and then check boxes every day to remind you about the importance of these.

But, why Routines?

There is a reason that great performers use routines to help them be at their best. Whether you watch a kicker in football set up for a shot at goal, or a concert pianist sit down to play, or a swimmer behind the starting blocks – you’ll notice, if you watch them often enough, that the great performers tend to do the same thing every time they need to perform well.

Great routines do a few important things for our performance. Firstly, they set us up for success by helping us perform a defined set of behaviours that we know precede great results. Great performers are deliberate about discovering these preceding behaviours and then executing them every single time they need them.

Secondly, routines are auto-pilot actions that we can do even when we’re under pressure. When we’re under stress our auto pilot kicks in and we have less control over our emotions and behaviours – we tend to just act on instinct rather than acting intentionally. With great routines, you can just let your auto pilot take over and guide you the right way.

Finally, routines give us something we can control under pressure. The need to perform can bring anxiety. One of the easiest ways to control this is to know that you can at least control the next small thing you need to do. This gives us a sense of agency.

So, in your day-to-day, what are the routines that you need? Here are the four most important:

"Great routines set us up for performance by helping us feel in control and have a go-to process under pressure"

THE MORNING ROUTINE

The morning routine gets the most attention out of all the routines in life. You can’t spend a minute on social media without some influencer, celebrity (B list or otherwise) or average Joe telling you about their amazing morning routine. I recently saw Oprah Winfrey’s claimed morning routine and it looked exhausting! Not to mention that her morning routine finished at 11am, which is when she started work for the day. That is obviously not feasible for the majority of us juggling work, families and other commitments.

So, there are a couple of contingencies for the morning routine:

If you’ve got all the time in the world

If you’re single, without kids, or you have a spouse that likes to sleep, leaves for work super early, or they just don’t really like spending time with you in the morning, then you probably have an hour or two to get your day off to a great start with a morning routine

In this case, you would definitely want to attend to all the things that will get neglected if not done before the ensuing day’s chaos.

At Performance Lab, we’re all about moving forward and growing in all aspects of life. So, do something in the morning that helps your physical, mental and emotional health. If we had an hour in the morning, here’s what we would do:

Physical health (30min) – exercise is the obvious choice here for most people, but this can also include preparing food for the day so you can make healthy choices. Getting about 5-10 minutes of direct sunlight is also important to set your circadian rhythm so that your body knows to start producing sleep chemicals in 10-12 hours’ time.

Mental Development (15min) – options would be meditation for training focus; reading; listening to a podcast or audio book – anything that helps you grow mentally.

Emotional Development (15min) – our favourite practice for this is a journaling exercise called Morning Pages, but you can also do regular journaling, goal review or simply set your intentions for the day.

If you have less time

If you have less time than this due to morning chores, making kids lunches, early shift work or just wanting to sleep in, then we would pick two of these three and do the other later in the day. This is especially effective if you tend to work out in the afternoon – you can do your mental and emotional practice in the morning.

If you have irregular morning schedules

I fall into this category. Some mornings start with exercise or kids sport, involving a 4.30am wake up. I am absolutely NOT waking up 15 minutes earlier to get my meditation or journaling done. Other mornings, following exercise, I have about an hour at home when I get showered, have breakfast, talk with the family and then pack the kids in the car for the school run. Consequently, time is limited.

To build some flexibility into my morning routine, here is how I structure it:

Before 9am, I need to complete my mental, physical and emotional health practices. That’s it. Consequently, I try not to schedule meetings before 9am and I find that I can always make time to do the three activities prior.

Finally, if you can double some of these up – for example listening to a podcast on your morning walk – then all the better.

Morning Routine – things to STOP

When developing any new behaviour, sometimes the best thing we can do is stop doing the things that hurt us. When we’re not intentional with our routines, we inadvertently do things that impact us negatively.

Even if you don’t engage in a meaningful morning routine, the things to STOP doing first thing in the morning are scrolling your device and checking email. If you can just stop doing those things your morning will be instantly better.

"Sometimes the best change we can make is to just stop a behaviour that is hurting us"

THE WORK BOOT UP ROUTINE

Two questions: Firstly, do you have a regular routine when you get to the office or sit at your desk? The answer is probably ‘yes.’ Even if you don’t know - the answer is still probably ‘yes.’ We are such creatures of habit, that often we just do the same thing day after day without any thought. Second question: is your pre-work routine helpful? The answer is most likely ‘no’ – especially if you don’t really know what you do.

If you ask people when they feel most productive during their workday, they overwhelmingly say: first thing in the morning. If you ask people what they do first thing in the morning, they overwhelmingly say that they check their calendar and scroll through their email. This makes no sense. If you are most productive first thing in the morning, then why would you do something as unproductive as checking your calendar and email? Why wouldn’t you put that time to better use?

When you are intentional about how you set up the start of your workday, you have a better chance of getting the important things done, instead of spinning your wheels. We call this the Work Boot Up Routine.

Key elements of the Work Boot Up Routine involve:

Set your intention for the day

What do you want to get out of the day at a macro level? Maybe you want to connect with your staff or move that big project along. Perhaps you have only one intention, which is to have that difficult conversation with your colleague that you have been putting off. Or you might be working on your emotional performance, so your intention for the day is to be positive and not get pulled in to negative arguments.

Plan your day

This is the most important element of the Work Boot Up Routine. Planning your day involves deciding when those important tasks are going to get done during your (probably) busy schedule. It gives you clarity about what needs to be done, makes your day realistic (when you plan according to your other commitments like meetings etc), and gives you a sense of calm about being able to fit everything in. It also helps you decide what can’t get done.

Spend 20min (minimum) on Important, Non-Urgent Work

If you never seem to have time for those long-term projects, this is a great habit to implement as part of your Work Boot Up Routine. Our important, long term, projects always get trumped by seemingly ‘urgent’ tasks. By doing some work on these first thing in the morning, we build some momentum before the chaos of the day ensues.

Work Boot Up Routine – things to STOP

You guessed it! Scrolling email and sorting your calendar is a digital black hole that can bite off 30-45 minutes of your day without realising it. These should be done after your Work Boot Up Routine.

THE WORK POWER DOWN ROUTINE

Work can be stressful. And too often we bring our work selves to our lives outside of work. We come home overloaded with baggage from the office and thoughts about tomorrow’s work load, and we might even find that we are distracted and irritable because of it. Your work self and your home self are likely to be two different people. So how do you stop one affecting the other? That’s where your Work Power Down Routine comes in handy.

This routine is designed to allow us to let go of work for the day and to focus our energies on life beyond work – and start this in a positive frame of mind. To do this we engage in some specific practices.

Positive Reflection

Every workday has negative events. It likely has some positives too, but these are harder to recall at the end of the day. Our emotional system has this trait where it is impacted more by negative events than positive. It is a great piece of evolutionary hard wiring that enabled us to stay alive by being hypersensitive to threats.

One way of dealing with this is to bring some positives into the spotlight. Positive Reflection simply involves writing (yes, writing is the best medium for this) three things that went well or that you were happy with. It could be three things you achieved, something you did that was challenging or fun, or something as simple as seeing a beautiful sunset on the way home. It doesn’t matter how big or small, the task is just about listing something. Research from Harvard suggests that this simple practice can improve happiness and optimism scores by up to 150%.

Plan Tomorrow

Planning for the following day allows us to forget about those thought-consuming items that we worry about. You don’t even have to make a complete plan: just think of the top 2-3 things that are important, then plan when you are going to do them the next day. Actually allocate time to them in your diary or calendar – the fact that you have set a time to take care of them allows you to let go.

Disconnect prior to arriving home

Finally, take some time on the commute home to disconnect from work. Have a set ritual like listening to some music or reading a book on the bus. We need at least 15 minutes to just forget about work and allow us to get into ‘home mode’ before we walk through the door.

Work Power Down Routine – things to STOP

This one is simple: stop working until the moment you get in the door. Resist squeezing in a couple extra phone calls on the way home and answering those final emails on your phone whilst parked in the garage. Give yourself some time to transition from work to home life.

THE PRE BED ROUTINE

Getting great quality sleep is one of the most important things we can do to perform at our best physically, mentally and emotionally. And setting ourselves up to get this quality sleep is one of the most simple yet impactful things we can do. The content of the routine is not as important as having a routine. A routine before bed works like Pavlov’s dogs – engaging in the routine regularly enough can start to trigger a cascade of sleep chemicals that will help you fall asleep and stay asleep.

It is probably important to note the things to avoid prior to bed. These would be digital screens, bright lights, stimulating foods or drinks with caffeine or high-sugar content. Late exercise or late meals can also hamper your ability to get quality sleep. Apart from these, your routine should include anything that allows you to slow down physically and mentally.

Finally, part of that routine should be to go to bed and wake up at the same time more days than not.

Pre-Bed Routine – things to STOP

The number one thing to stop is looking at your smart phone in bed. If you want to sabotage your sleep, this is a sure-fire way to do it.

Conclusion

These four routines will take less than 30 minutes each day once you get the hang of them. But they can dramatically change the way you approach your day, the way you finish the day, and how you feel in terms of positivity and productivity. Use our Focus Planner to set these up and keep them on track.