Evening Routine
This may sound odd, but your day actually starts the night before. When and how you end your workday, how you spend your evening, and what time you go to sleep have a major impact on your next day. I refer to this process as your “Evening Routine”, but depending on your work schedule, this may actually start in the afternoon. Your Evening Routine begins as soon as you end your workday.
This leads us to the first point: you need to have a set end to your workday. It doesn’t have to be the same time every day, although it is best if it is. Today’s world has shifted away from the old 9-5 workday in an office or factory, and now people are connected 24/7, tempting them into allowing work to seep into their personal lives. You can make a major improvement in your quality of life and actually improve your work productivity by setting a hard cut-off for the end of your workday. At that point, you begin your Evening Routine.
The core elements of your Evening Routine are:
Closing Out Your Day
Planning Tomorrow
Cleaning Your Work Environment
Disconnecting
Closing Out Your Day:
Process your emails to an empty email inbox by RAFTing. (We’ll cover this later on in the Thrive! by Happiful program).
Do a “brain dump” and capture all the things that need to be done in a task manager. This allows you to do what psychologists call “closing the mental loops” that would otherwise remain open and cause a baseline of anxiety. For task management software, I recommend the free RememberTheMilk, but you may be already using other task management software. For now, even a simple document or spreadsheet will work fine as long as you use some form of electronic system to get all of your to-do’s out of your head.
Reflect on your day and journal a few ways you can improve. (The Happiful Planner is designed for this.)
Review your day and journal some wins: things that went well. (The Happiful Planner has a spot for this, too.)
Planning Tomorrow:
Review tomorrow’s calendar for meetings, calls, and deadlines. Knowing what's ahead allows you to plan and prepare accordingly. Record these time-based items on your Happiful Planner.
Write down your actions for tomorrow, including work and personal items. Your plan should consist of a handwritten list of only the things you are committed to doing the next day. Number them in order of importance. Having a clear plan in the morning streamlines your workflow and minimizes decision fatigue. Of course, the Happiful Planner is designed for this purpose, and we’ll go into more detail on this soon.
You may want to also plan your exercise, your meals, your personal development, and who you will connect with. You are far more likely to do things if you have them on a written plan the night before.
Cleaning Your Workspace:
A clutter-free environment can have a positive impact on your mental state and prevents distractions the next day. This includes clearing off your physical workplace, filing any papers or folders, and closing tabs on your computer. Taking 5 minutes to clean up will help reduce your stress, allow for better sleep, and make you more productive tomorrow.
Disconnecting:
End your work day and mentally and physically disconnect from work, including the devices that connect you to work.
Exit out of email and turn off your computer. This is important for multiple reasons, including that it is a symbolic way of putting a definite end to your work day.
Place your phone in airplane mode, preferably away from you and out of sight. This ensures you won’t be sucked back into “work mode” or restart those “open loops” that cause anxiety, and it also ensures that you will be fully present with your family instead of continuously distracted by your phone. I know that doing this may sound impossible, but please try it for a week. I have been fully disconnected by 7:00 pm every day for several years, and the same is true of many high performers. No phone, no tablet, no computer – I am completely off the grid and unreachable from 7:00 pm on, and it has never once caused any issues. If you believe you can’t completely disconnect from your phone because you need to be available for emergency communications, you can use the Focus mode on your iPhone or Android phone to allow notifications from specific people or apps during specific times; in combination with the Opal app to block your phone’s access to specified apps or types of apps during designated times. But make sure this is truly for emergencies.
Fully disconnecting from work and your electronic devices allows you to relax and spend time with loved ones, whether it's family, friends, or pets. It ensures a better night’s sleep, and it will allow you to get your day off to a better start tomorrow. If you try it, you’ll see that this one simple change creates a dramatic improvement in your life.
You can expand your Evening Routine further by incorporating optional activities like journaling, visualization, affirmations, personal and professional development reading, or meditation.
Finally, and this is not technically part of your Evening Routine, you should have a set bedtime, preferably early. Having a set bedtime and wake time ensures that you are working with your body’s natural circadian rhythms, which is helpful for your energy levels, health, and overall well-being.
Remember, you are likely to naturally resist these ideas since they represent change. And many people are literally addicted to their electronics. You may tell yourself these changes are not realistic, or you may come up with all sorts of rationalizations for why they don’t apply to you. But that is just your instinctive resistance to change. Remember the wisdom of Jim Rohn: “Your life does not get better by chance, it gets better by change.” Instead of resisting, just commit to trying it for one week.
The benefits of following this Evening Routine are immense and you’ll feel them immediately. Other than clearing out your email inbox, the rest of the basic Evening Routine takes about 15 minutes and ensures you get lower stress, better sleep, and a more energetic and productive tomorrow.