10 Ways to Energise Your Day
Posted: March 1st, 2007 at 5:02am
Waking up in the morning can be difficult. Even if you go to bed full of energy and enthusiasm, it doesn’t always carry across to the morning. If you find yourself with a groggy head after waking up, try some of these tips to give yourself some energy.
1. Exercise — 20 to 30 minutes of exercise can do wonders for your energy levels. If the weather is nice, it’s even better as you can go outside and breath in some fresh air. If you’re particularly enthusiastic, you can go outside in the cold and rain too. If nothing else it will wake you up!
2. Relax — It might seem counter-productive to relax as soon as you get up, but it aids concentration and gives you some time to clarify your thoughts. Even though “just getting on with it” seems like the smart thing to do, it can end up doing more harm than good. Take a few minutes every morning to do some deep breathing or light meditation and clear your head.
3. A Quick Shower — Some people recommend a lukewarm shower in the morning to wake them up, but personally I prefer it to be a little warmer. This is a good idea if you’ve done some exercise!
4. Ditch The Computer — There have been far too many days when I’ve sat down to “check my email” only to glance at the clock later and find half my day has gone. Even if your work requires a computer, try and blast through some manual tasks first.
5. Listen to Something Inspiring — This also goes great with exercise. Make a collection of inspiring tunes or podcasts, and listen to them whilst you work-out.
6. Read Something Inspiring — A few inspiring stories first thing in the morning can be a great boost. There are plenty of books full of these stories, but autobiographies are also a good place to go.
7. Revisit a Previous Victory — This is one of my favourites, because it’s so simple but is easy to overlook. When things get difficult, our first reaction is often to affirm that we’re incapable of completing the task, when the truth is that we’re much better than we give ourselves credit for. Take a few moments to remember all the times you’ve been faced with a difficult moment and have succeeded.
8. Read Your Goals — Your goals should inspire you, so read through them every morning to get yourself in the mood. This also helps to keep you focused on what you want, which is always a good thing.
9. Choose a Reward — Not everything on your to-do list will be fun and exciting, and you may need a little encouragement to get things done. Pick out something that you want, and then treat yourself to it when you’re done. Make sure you spend some time thinking about the reward to build your desire and motivation. Simple, but effective if done properly.
10. Ditch the TV and Newspaper — It’s nice to feel informed, but being bombarded with all of the unpleasantness the World has to offer every morning can be a real motivation killer. Use the time saved to read something more inspiring, such as your goals or an uplifting story.
Progress Tracking and Beyond
Posted: December 7th, 2006 at 9:53pm
In my last post I looked over my progress log system, and what has and hasn’t worked. It’s time for a change, but it would be easy to add a tonne of stuff I don’t need so it’s important that the purpose of the system is clearly defined:
Something to help me stick to my goals, both long and short term, and to help me change my habits.
Onto the requirements:
Requirements
Paper Based — The main reasons for this is that I find it much easier to modify a paper based system “on the fly”. The other main reason is that I find paper to be more rewarding to use when ticking things off. It also means I don’t need to switch the computer on first thing in the morning, which would stop the “I’ll just check my email” phase that can last hours.
Printable — As much fun as it was to draw all that stuff, it really needs to be printable so I can stick it in a binder and save myself some time.
Bigger System — Ideally it should cover my long term goals as well as my weekly ones, and also my affirmations and intentions. These items should be easy to access so that I don’t overlook them. There should also be the potential to add slots for my 30 day trials.
Points Tracking — Points tracking worked well in previous versions of my progress tracker, so I’ll be keeping it.
Space for Reflection — There should be space to write down what worked and what didn’t work, which I should be able to put in a stack and review when my monthly/quarterly goal sessions come around. There’s not much point in writing these things down if I won’t be using them.
Weekly Goal Tracking — There should be a space to monitor the progress of my top three goals.
Weekly Review Checklist — The weekly sheet should have a checklist for completing my GTD weekly review. This is more of a system to help me get into the habit of performing a weekly review.
Version 1.0
I’m not much of an artist, so this version is somewhat bland. I fully expect the design to change over time, so I’ll be linking to updates from this page.
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Weekly Goals Tracker
The first document is the “weekly goals tracker”, which takes the place of my old drawable system. It’s quite similar to the old version, but now has two new sections. The first one is called “three things to be thankful for” which is another tool for making sure I don’t overlook the positive things that have happened in the week. The second new section is a checklist for my GTD weekly review.
ProgressLog-WeeklySheet.doc (53KB)
ProgressLog-WeeklySheet.odt (17KB)
ProgressLog-WeeklySheet.pdf (69KB)
30 Day Trial — Progress Monitor
The second document is a progress monitor for 30 day trials, and is geared towards changing bad habits into positive ones.
ThirtyDayTrial-ProgressTracker.doc (32KB)
ThirtyDayTrial-ProgressTracker.odt (7KB)
ThirtyDayTrial-ProgressTracker.pdf (45KB)
Licence and Credits
These files are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 Licence, which means you’re welcome to share and modify them as long as you keep the original link and don’t use them for commercial purposes.
The b-Alert tracker is taken from “The Power of Focus“, and the 30 day trial is a modified version of the habit changer taken from the same book. The scoring system was inspired by David Seah’s “The Printable CEO“.