A guide to creating a daily routine and planning the day: the formula for a productive day
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We all have an intrinsic motivation to make the most effective use of our limited time on earth. Doing more in a shorter time, not letting time pass without doing anything, and engaging in pursuits that can improve ourselves are among the most important issues for all of us.

Studies on time management in work environments where productivity and efficiency are the most important show that 40% of us spend their entire day on non-productive jobs. So what makes the remaining 60% more productive?



People who can use their time much more productively and in a balanced way are actually those who are not able to do a lot of work in a short time, contrary to common belief, but who can use all hours of a day in the most effective way for working and break times. You will find that you can use your time much better when you follow certain routines and, more importantly, discover what your needs and desires are.

This daily program flow and recommendations, which we have prepared based on the daily plans and researches of the world's most productive people, will help you use the time at the optimum level when you organize it according to your needs.

Start your day with a morning routine


The morning hours when our body wakes up with the daylight and starts the day refreshed with the energy it collects during sleep are known as the most productive hours of the day. In addition to the researches, the names included in Laura Vanderkam's bestseller book "What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast" also spend the morning hours with whatever work or activity they make a routine. Drinking herbal tea, yawning, taking a shower, taking a walk, writing a diary or cleaning up e-mails… Although what can be done in the morning varies from person to person, the trick is to do the same thing every morning and turn it into a ritual.

For example, one of Vanderkam's names in his book, Elon Musk's morning routine is to read the first 30 minutes of the e-mails he considers important, accompanied by coffee, and then take a quick shower and hit the road to the office. Mark Zuckerberg, another successful name known for his productivity, does not like to wake up early, but from the moment he wakes up, he continues his routine of running, breakfast, dressing and going to work in the same order every day. Arianna Huffington doesn't use an alarm clock to wake up. She never looks at her phone without She meditating for a few minutes. Tony Robbins is among the names whose waking time is unclear. However, regardless of what time he wakes up, the first thing he does when he wakes up is to jump into the pool and swim. Jeff Bezos, known as one of the richest people in the world, is among those who listen to the body clock to wake up. After waking up, he has breakfast with his wife every morning and creates his daily schedule.
Suggestions for the morning routine:
As you can see, although there is a huge difference between the rituals of successful people, their common characteristic is that they try to continue this ritual by adhering to a ritual every morning. The essence of the matter is actually whether you continue what you do every day, rather than what you do. If you don't have a morning routine, here are some suggestions to create a morning routine from scratch, at least in the beginning stages:

Wake up before anyone else living with you at home. Even if you are not living with someone, try to wake up a few hours before your working hours when your attention will be constantly interrupted by notifications. In this quiet time that will not distract you, you can return to your important e-mails or clean e-mails, make a reading time for yourself, write a diary, meditate, or plan the rest of the day carefully.
Start your day with at least one of the trio of exercise, meditation and healthy eating. It sounds like a cliché, but it's clear that you won't find the energy you need for the rest of the day by eating unhealthy junk food from your bed. Therefore, try to make at least one of these three that will activate your energy into your morning routine.
Get the flow of the day and plan. Research shows that people who go on this plan all day by setting concrete and clear goals in the first hours of the day are 50% more successful in achieving their goals, and they feel that they are in control of their lives 32% more than others.
Review your agenda after you create it. In this way, you will have the opportunity to prepare for what you will face during the day, even how much stress you will experience and how rested you will feel. It can also be a great morning routine to review your schedule to see jams and conflicts in your schedule and avoid last minute stress.
Take care of anything you love to do. Eating breakfast, taking your dog for a walk or taking care of any of your hobbies… One of the best ways to start your day happily and raise your mood is to take care of your favorite work.
Start by focusing on your 3 big and important responsibilities.

If you are constantly working on small tasks at the start of your day, you may find it difficult to find opportunities to work on your larger goals throughout the day. List the three biggest responsibilities you will do for that day from the previous day or in your morning routine. Make these responsibilities at the top of your to-do list. Plan your entire program according to these three important responsibilities and try to eliminate any distractions that could disrupt these tasks.

For example, if you have reserved 9-11 am for your first big task, turn off your phone and all your notifications between these hours. If your working environment is not suitable for you to work alone, use a headset. The important thing is to keep your ears shut while working on the big responsibilities of the day and focus only on what you are doing.

So how do you decide which of these three big missions to start with? With the "eat the frog" technique, which is used quite frequently in prioritization and will be discussed in detail in our next article, you can decide which job you should start with. According to this technique, the job you need to start is to start with the responsibility you have to do but do not want to do the most. When you complete the task that you didn't want to do because it strained or disliked you and your feet went back, you will feel much more relaxed for the rest of the day. With the momentum of shedding a heavy burden and the feeling of accomplishment, you can spend the rest of the day much more productive.
Take a long midday break
One of the things you should definitely not skip while planning your work schedule according to the hours you are most productive is to plan your breaks effectively. In order to spend your day more productively and efficiently, be sure to take a break from work in the middle of the day after spending your morning productive times working on important tasks.

Taking a break from work doesn't mean you spend this time doing nothing. For example, Evan Williams, founder of Twitter and Medium, uses the breaks he takes between days to exercise and states that he used to exercise in the morning, but then moved the routine to his lunch break, so he felt much more energetic for the rest of the day. Bussiness Insider's founder, Alexa Pipia, is among those who took the exercise to a lunch break. You can evaluate the breaks you take to work at noon with routines that give you happiness and energy.


Try to make your phone calls and meetings in the afternoon as much as possible.
meeting

Due to the circadian rhythm, which is the biological cycle of our body, we can experience a situation in which the mind works slower and has difficulty focusing, which is called brain fog in the afternoon. Instead of pushing yourself to fight this and focus on work, you can replenish your mental energy by eating some snacks and sleeping for a short time. In the afternoon, you can review your schedule, write down the work you've completed, and assess how much progress you've made. Doing this will help you gain the motivation you need for the rest of the day.

Since your energy will be relatively low in the afternoon hours, you can devote these hours to light-intensity tasks that do not require much mental effort, which will distract your hand, instead of tasks that will force you or require you to be creative. Phone calls and meetings are among the most effective and effortless tasks you can do during these hours.
Try to follow the 52-17 rule
None of us are robots that work for the purpose of being efficient and constantly producing. It is an indisputable fact that we all need frequent breaks during the day to use our capacity effectively, to relax and to renew. While there are hundreds of different opinions about how many breaks we should take during the day, a recent study shows that those in the top 10% of the list of most productive people follow a routine that ideally includes 52 minutes of work and 17 minutes of rest breaks. In order not to feel exhausted, tired and overwhelmed while doing work, you should definitely not neglect to take 17-minute rest breaks even if you do not work full performance for 52 minutes.

Choose a theme for every day
Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter and Square, says he always allocates 8 hours a day to both companies. His answer to the question of how he can stay productive with working 16 hours a day is to create a different theme for each day.

Dorsey, which divides Mondays into management meetings, Tuesdays into product development studies, Wednesdays into marketing and communication, Thursdays into software and partnerships, and Fridays into 5 different themes as recruitment and corporate culture, it is He says he keeps his motivation and energy alive. Similarly, Dorsey, who also theme weekends, uses Saturdays for trekking and Sundays for planning the next week.

Dorsey says that theming the days made him more focused and that way he was able to distance himself from all distractions.

Try to minimize your decision-making time


Have you ever noticed that people like Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama, and Steve Jobs wear the same clothes every day? Of course, the fact that these people always wear the same clothes is not due to their bad taste or because they are lazy. The only reason they do this is because of their willingness to preserve their mental energies.

The mental energy required to make smart and effective decisions, especially in the later hours of the day, is at the lowest levels. The way to keep your mental energy as lively as possible is to spend as little time as possible on simple matters such as choosing clothes or choosing food, and to avoid decision-making fatigue.

Productive people try to avoid decision fatigue by automating and streamlining decisions that don't matter as much as possible. You can achieve this with simple applications such as preparing your next day clothes before bed, determining your food from Sunday for all meals, and adding your meetings to your calendar instead of keeping in mind.
Group your work on the to-do list
As you are reading this post, it is very likely that you are in the middle of a meeting or are interested in a job. However, scientific research has already proven that the ability to do multiple jobs at the same time, called multitasking, which was once quite popular, is not real. Research shows that it is not possible to focus on two different things at the same time, and we fall into the delusion that we can do multiple jobs at the same time simply because we can move our attention quickly between jobs.


The results of a study conducted at the University of Michigan show that our productivity decreases by 40% when we deal with more than one at the same time, that is, when we move our attention constantly between jobs. If you need to focus on multiple jobs at the same time, you can consider grouping your jobs and tasks instead of multitasking. The implementation, as you can imagine, is quite simple: After you create your to-do list, work by gathering similar tasks together and focusing only on those tasks in a certain period of time. For example, you can fill all your phone calls in a row in one hour, or spend an hour in the afternoon just cleaning mail and responding to emails you haven't returned to.

Spend the evening hours just to rest

Your body begins to secrete the hormones it needs to rest and regenerate in the evening when the daylight disappears. For this reason, no matter how busy you are, make sure to take a rest in the evening. To spend the next day more productively, you need to rest in the evening and let your body regenerate. You can fill these hours that you do not work with activities that will help you reduce your stress, such as meditation, taking care of your hobbies, and watching things.

According to the American Psychological Association, the most effective strategies to reduce your stress include exercise, reading or listening to music, spending time with friends and family, massage, outdoor walking, meditation, yoga and hobbies that can help you unleash your creative power. Do nots on the list include shopping, smoking and alcohol, eating, playing computer games, surfing the Internet, and all kinds of activities that require you to be in front of the artificial screen for more than two hours.

The most important thing is the last activity of such a productive day: sleep. It is necessary to sleep at the same time every day and wake up at the same time, to fall asleep between 10:30 and 11:00 when the melatonin hormone is secreted, and to complete the recommended 7-9 hours of sleep time. All the details you need to pay attention to for a quality and healthy night's sleep Is sleeping or getting sick: HOW DID YOU LIKE THIS WRITING? -BULENT