Unless you win the Powerball, success doesn’t often tend to just land in your lap.
Generally speaking, success is a product of your daily habits.
Our habits define us; they can be the decider whether we reach our goals in life or not.
So if success is what you’re after, you must take a deeper look at your habits, making the correct adjustments where necessary, with dedication and discipline.
In this article, I’ll take you through the top productivity habits successful people always practice, whether they’re tired or not.
Once you get a clearer idea of things, you’ll be in a better position moving forward.
Let’s dive in!
1) They have a morning routine
Successful people don’t roll out of bed on weekdays at 11 am hungover and depressed.
Almost every successful person I know has some semblance of a structured morning routine.
They know that how they start their morning will set the tone for the rest of the day; hence, they make it count.
They’ll wake up at a reasonable hour, perhaps get some meditation or exercise in, eat a balanced, light breakfast, go for a walk with the dogs, read, or what have you.
Mornings are not just dismissed as a time to struggle to get out of bed, scroll through Instagram, and then rush to the office.
Successful people consider mornings as a crucial, arguably even sacred, part of the day.
2) They engage in prioritization
Successful people have their priorities in order.
They almost always base tasks on their level of importance and urgency.
They get the more cerebral, stressful, high-impact stuff out of the way when they’re sharpest, typically at the start of the day.
This ensures they stay focused, so when fatigue invariably sets in, they’re able to still be productive, focusing on the less mentally taxing tasks at an effective level, knowing that the more challenging work is behind them.
As entrepreneur Jessica Jackley astutely puts it: “As all entrepreneurs know, you live and die by your ability to prioritize. You must focus on the most important, mission-critical tasks each day and night, and then share, delegate, delay, or skip the rest.”
3) They have a schedule (time blocking)
As you know by now, successful people are advocates of structure.
Unlike many of us, they don’t often wing it and hope for the best.
Time blocking means dedicating specific blocks of time to specific tasks.
Successful people tend to plan their days.
They don’t just wander or coast through life. Everything is planned ahead of time: work tasks, meetings, breaks, get-togethers with friends.
All these things are meticulously jotted down on a calendar, with each activity allocated a certain amount of time.
Because as successful and productive people know quite well: time is money.
4) They maintain a healthy lifestyle
It’s no longer a state secret, how healthy you are has an almost direct effect on your level of productivity.
Successful people are deeply attuned to this correlation.
During the pandemic, I became quite profoundly unhealthy.
My mindset was “Well, the world is going to shit, I might as well enjoy my life.”
But my definition of enjoyment essentially meant hedonism.
I’d eat copious amounts of takeout, snack on Doritos, and regularly imbibe soda and an assortment of liquors, often to excess.
Exercise became a foreign concept.
I gained thirty pounds; and frankly, my self-worth and self-image plummeted to record-low levels.
I hated myself and who I had become.
And in addition to all that, my work suffered.
I had no motivation to get things done, always giving myself and everyone else excuses to slack off (pun intended), to skip the Zoom meeting.
It’s a minor miracle I wasn’t sacked.
Fortunately, one morning, I had a moment of clarity.
I snapped out of the toxic trance and became determined to turn things around–which somehow, I eventually did.
When you’re healthy, you’re chances of real success increase exponentially.
Getting in regular exercise, having a balanced diet, sufficient sleep, self-care, and staying away from toxic relationships; all these things add up in a big way.
Successful people make conscious efforts to maintain a certain lifestyle–one that directly impacts their productivity.
5) They set goals
Successful people don’t just coast through life, waiting for their monthly wages to come in to pay off their student loans, rent, or utility bills.
They always have goals; clear, achievable goals, both long and short-term.
This provides them with a perpetual sense of direction.
Each day, they work towards achieving their goals, slowly but surely; celebrating their victories along the way.
They don’t get overwhelmed, precisely because of this systematic approach.
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