6 Steps to Design Your Day For Success

One thing is obvious, the most successful people follow a strategy. That strategy is that they deliberately design their day for success.

It is possible to maximise your productivity, your performance and your free time by applying a strategy to how you run your day.

Everything we do in life is a strategy. Procrastination and time-wasting are also strategies. They’re just strategies that don’t necessarily lead us in the direction where we want to be heading.

Here are 6 ways in which you can begin to deliberately design your day for success.

1. Plan Your Day the Night Before

During the Week

Before you go to sleep in the evening, write down the things that you want to achieve the next day. The benefit of doing this is that you’re taking the thoughts out of your head and placing them onto paper.

Sunday

I love to set aside at least two hours every Sunday afternoon to get myself ready for the week ahead.

I’ll organise the following:

Decide what my WIG (Wildly Important Goal) is for the week ahead.
Write out a “to do” list in Trello and I’ll allocate those items to days of my week. I have a theme for each day of the week that I try and stick to. For example, Fridays are always for learning and development and my Wednesdays are for meetings.
I check my revenue goals for my business and I’ll decide which core activities I want to drive that week in order to reach my goals.
Outstanding bills are paid and any life admin is organised.
Groceries are purchased for the week ahead.
Organise all of my learning and development resources that I’ll use during the week. This includes books and online study. I place them somewhere readily accessible so that I can see them.
Download any business podcasts that I want to listen to so that they’re available on my phone when I’m commuting to and from work.
Review my Daily Domination Checklist and amend my schedule. I’ve created the checklist to ensure that I consciously stay balanced with the following:
- Business.
- Wealth and finance.
- Learning and development.
- Health and Exercise.
- Self-care.
- Social and fun.

2. Add Everything to Your Calendar

I’m obsessed with diarising everything in my Google Calendar. This includes the following:

Exercise sessions during the week.
Personal appointments (booked 6-months in advance).
Learning and development time.
Monthly check-ins for my business.
Rest time and “me” time.

The benefit of this is twofold:

I waste less willpower during the day deciding deciding between competing activities; and
I have a natural tendency to work too much and run myself into the ground. Scheduling in my free time ensures that I give myself permission to CHILL OUT.

By scheduling in my key activities, living a balanced life becomes a non-negotiable.

3. Design a Morning Ritual that Works for You

Designing your day for success begins from the moment that you wake up. Every morning, I will meditate for 20-minutes in bed.

After my meditation, I do the following exercises:

I set my intention for the day and I’ll watch a movie reel in my mind of how I want my day to unfold.
I spend a few moments thinking of the things that I’m grateful for and I’ll visualise myself sending love and abundance out into the world and I visualise it returning to me multiplied.

It’s important to me that my mornings are relaxing and purposeful. To assist in this, I avoid checking my phone for emails and notifications. I also prefer to completely avoid the news. News stories tend to be too negative for my liking!

Traffic in the morning can be a bit of a nightmare. I like to avoid the morning rush and cut down on my commute time by answering all of my emails at home before I head into work at around 10am.

When I arrive at work, I’m free to then concentrate on the tasks that require more concentration and more of my time.

The benefit is that I’m not fighting for a seat on the bus and I feel as though I’ve already checked items off my list before I head into work.

4. Check-in with Your Purpose

It is so much easier to stay motivated and productive when you know Why you’re doing what you’re doing. Otherwise, that long “to do” list can seem overwhelming.

When I arrive at work, I look at my Vision Board which has all my monthly business goals set out along with my Purpose.

My Purpose is the most powerful reminder and motivator that I use every single day.

5. Trust the Ebb and Flow of your Energy

One of the greatest lies that we’ve been fed is the 5-day work week. I don’t think it’s natural to “work” 5 days a week and have 2 days a week to play and rest. I also don’t believe in the 9-to-5 workday.

Instead, I prefer to listen to the ebb and flow of my body and my energy levels. If I feel like working from 6am and taking 3 hours off at 3pm, I will do so.

If I find that I’m very low in energy one day (it happens!) and I don’t have any meetings, then I’ll schedule in a few hours to look after myself and rest.

The art of intuitively listening to our body is fundamental and working in flow with your energy (as opposed to fighting it) will make you wildly more productive.

5. Get rid of anything that you don’t need to be doing

I’m an enormous fan of using my community and my A-team to help me live my most successful life. We’re not designed to do everything on our own.

Write a list of the three core activities in your business or your personal life that no one else can do apart from you. For me, that includes:

Coaching my clients;
Creating educational content for my business;
Speaking at events, networking and speaking to my customers; and
Being present with the people that I love.

Almost everything else can be outsourced and should be outsourced.

6. Get into the Habit of Saying “No”

About a year ago I started to notice a theme in my life. Some days and weeks I noticed that I was feeling frustrated and resentful.

My frustration and resentment was a result of saying “Yes” to too many people and commitments without checking in with myself and what I really wanted and needed.

Learning how to say “no” was an incredibly difficult exercise for me at first because I constantly want to please people.

I have since realised that my mission and purpose is more important to me than pleasing someone else temporarily.

I’m still getting better at this, but I will not make myself available unless I am 100% certain that:

I can follow through and “close the loop”;
My “Yes” keeps me aligned with my mission, purpose and my needs; and
I don’t feel frustrated or resentful by agreeing to something.

If you’re looking for tools, templates and frameworks for maximising your productivity, managing your time and your calendar, then you may be interested in the upcoming Design Your Day for Success Productivity Workshop being held in Sydney on 22 March.

L x