Waking up early. Having something exciting to do helps. Like drinking coffee recently.
Recharging well. In between work sessions, I feel like activities like going for a walk, playing an instrument and showering work better to keep me productive than browsing YouTube.
For me it's about blocking everything else, blocking hacker news/reddit/youtube is a huge productivity thing for me, so deciding that I am not going to be part of social media and i'm going to centre my life around the things I want to be and creating as many big time blocks to focus on that as I can. The rest of the time is for me to be more playful, but in order to do anything, I need chunks of focused, clear time.
Noise cancellation headphones, binaural beats / focus music and a timer. Then I shut the rest of the world out and just work on what I need to work on.
I'm a pretty chaotic person with my thoughts, so I have to make the choice to focus on something for set hours and then I try to stay as focused as I can during that time and then have unfocused time when I can do whatever I want/indulge my thoughts and curiosity.
Being content with what you have is huge. I feel like a lot of successful people needed their grandmothers to sit them down and say “how much do you really need? Why not slow down and enjoy what you’ve got?”
As for the last point, my spin is a bit different. I don’t laugh when things go absurdly wrong, but I do focus forward. That has made me remarkably resilient. “Ok this all went pear-shaped, but the best outcome from here is X and that’s where I’m aiming.”
The next morning, I pick up that list and get started on it. Doing my damnest to avoid reading HN, the news, etc. That can come as a break later in the day.
Your uniform should be comfortable and make you feel good.
E.g. you decide that you will wear jeans and black t-thirts everyday. So you go out and buy 2 pairs of jeans and 10 black t-shirts. Then every day that’s what you get dressed in and this never have to think “what am I going to wear today?”
I wore brown overalls and white t-shirts for years as my uniform. This makes you more productive because you’ve now eliminated effort from another task in your day, making it more efficient and able to spend mental energy on other stuff.
But, seriously, how long does it take to select your clothes in the morning? 1 minute out of the 1440 minutes in a day? Then sit in meetings for a couple hours a day?? Just does not compute.
- Eat healthy.
- Regular, daily exercise and flexibility work.
- Automate or delegate everything I can.