Why You Need an Evening Routine

This is a guest post by Hank Geng from Min-Max Your Life.  Hank writes about productivity and organization, helping readers overcome overwhelm and procrastination.

When was the last time you looked at your phone? Checked your email?  10 minutes ago?  Less?

In this day and age, we’re addicted to our screens, and we get barraged from every direction. So many things demand our time, and in the process of managing it all, it’s easy to lose sight of what really matters to you. 

It’s incredibly helpful to make a habit of unplugging on a daily basis so you can stop this constant flow of information and have a chance to recharge. 

This works best in the context of an evening routine that prepares you for the next day, allows you to reflect on what you are grateful for, puts you in a relaxed mood, and lets you get a good night’s sleep to wake up refreshed and energized. 

There’s no one size fits all approach, but you can get started on creating your own evening routine by following this four-step simple formula: 

The Four Steps

  • Review tomorrow’s schedule and tasks to make sure you don’t have any surprises. You may want to:
  1. Plan out what you’re going to wear in the morning
  2. Set your alarm for when you need to wake up
  3. Decide how you’re getting to your first destination tomorrow
  • Reflect on today by asking yourself a few essential questions:
  1. What are you grateful for?
  2. What made this day unique?
  3. Did you learn something new? 
  • Relax by putting your screens away and starting to wind down. You could try one of the following:
  1. Read a physical book or your Kindle
  2. Yoga
  3. Meditate
  • Rest by turning off your lights, drawing the curtains, and going to sleep. 
  1. People require different amounts of sleep, but start with allotting yourself 8 hours for sleep and go from there.

By creating your own evening routine that includes these four factors, you’ll start waking up the next morning refreshed and energized, ready to face the day. 

Do you have an evening routine?

If not, try reserving an hour before your bedtime tonight to try creating your own using the framework above.

Four Reasons Against Working From Home

There was this guy.  He wore casual clothing and seemed to be present at 100% of his kids' school events.  

I secretly wondered what he did for a living but never had the guts to go over and ask him.  

As it turns out, he worked from home.  Doing something related to software (that's usually enough of a response at the neighborhood cocktail party as in "yeah, I'm in software"), he managed to support his family and live to talk about it.  Even more, he seemed quite happy with his life.  

His name was Kevin.

There are a lot of Kevins out there- people who work either occasionally or often from a home office.  This seems odd, as something luxurious and novel but not as something that "normal people" do.

The modern workplace, broken and dysfunctional as it typically is, wants us to think that a long commute is normal.  Add in frequent interruptions, bad lighting and boring meetings.

I was that guy and those were normal things for me.  While I wondered what Kevin did for a living, I secretly envied him.  

Fast forward five years and I now work from home about half of every day.  My wardrobe, unless I'm at a meeting, is business casual.  You don't want to come between me and my kids' basketball games.  It's a new normal for me and it feels very good.

Still, it's not for everyone.

In fact, there are four reasons why you should not consider working from home:

  1. You crave people contact on a daily basis.  If this is a big deal for you, don't work from home.  When you work from home, you can have as much contact as you like or need but it will be contact that you make happen.  There are no "drop-ins", etc.
  2. You can't see technology as a viable replacement for face-to-face contact.  For me, a Zoom or Skype call "counts" as real communication.  If you can't see yourself ever making that substitution, working from home isn't for you.
  3. You don't have a dedicated space.  This is big.  I don't think you necessarily need an entire room (although that helps) but you do need some space that is only used for work. If no desk/room/nook exists at your home for you to work in, working from home might not be for you.
  4. You worry too much about what others will think.  Your neighbors will wonder what you do.  Other parents at your kids' school will do the same (as I did with Kevin).  If you can't handle that level of scrutiny, working from home might not be for you.

Here's an experiment that you might want to try: work from home for two hours one day and see how you like it.  It doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing affair.  Being honest with the four conditions above can go a long way towards determining if home-working is for you.

BONUS: while no longer an active podcast, the best one I've found related to working from home is called Home Work.

One Clever Way to Chart Your Personal Growth

Productivity expert Carson Tate uses a wonderful tool to categorize folks according to their personal style of working.  

The Arranger

The Planner

The Visualizer

The Prioritizer

You can take the test here.  The book is even better as each chapter lets you just zoom in on the strategies that match your particular style.  As an avid book scanner, it was nice to be able to breeze through each chapter, not feeling guilty about it.

I'm a Planner first and a Visualizer second. My wife is an Arranger to the max.

Typically, when you take any assessment like Tate's (or Disc or Myers Briggs, etc.) it just gets filed and you move on.  I decided to do something different this time around.  I wanted to savor the assessment and link it to other measurements like Disc, Meyers Briggs and Enneagram.  

What if I could design a personal growth "tool" of sorts?  And, what if I could make it look nice?

The latter part was important to me.  Yes, I've written (in the past) my goals and posted them on my office wall.  Yes, it's worked.  What didn't work was the utilitarian vibe- I needed something stylish, something with some class.  

Enter Canva.com.  

I use Canva daily (yes, daily) for reports, flyers, brochures, social media graphics and anything else in between.  It's nearly free and makes even the most basic designer look like a pro.  What if I could take my productivity style, along with a few other growth metrics, and create something out of it for my office?  Using Canva, I finally could.

Step two was to find a template in Canva that matched my office's aesthetic.  I chose a "resume" design- very simple and easy to manipulate.

Step three became more difficult as I had to limit the information to one page. The temptation in these things is to make it complicated.  Not this time, I told myself...

The final product included the following:  

  • Mission statement
  • Productivity style
  • Myers Briggs indicator
  • Disc rating
  • Enneagram rating
  • Quarterly goals
  • Spiritual growth target
  • Audacious career goal

Here's what the final product looks like in my office:

IMG_1149.PNG

The value of this process was twofold.  First, it memorialized what I'm working on right now.  Second, it made personal growth much more than just a few ideas on a scrap of paper.  When you make something look nice, it gives it dignity and a proper place.  

Think- Baron Fig notebook as opposed to a cheap $1 version.

You can do this too.  It's that easy.  I've created a template for you to use for yourself.  It will save you about 15 minutes.  If you're familiar with Canva and want to do it on your own, that's ok too.  

Here's the download:

Free Personal Growth Template

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The real question is this: how are you capturing and honoring your own growth goals?  

Sometimes, Productivity Isn't Enough

About two weeks ago, something weird happened.  After a very productive week, I went home on a Friday afternoon feeling somehow unfulfilled.

My todo list was solid.  I had used my Daily Plan day after day as I have for years.  (You can grab a copy using the form below.)

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My quarterly goals, inspired by other practitioners, were in place.

Why was the weekend, ordinarily a delight, seemingly ominous as my week wrapped up?  

My life coach was very helpful after we talked about it.  His point was simple enough- you need more than productivity to feel happy.

I turned to Patrick Lencioni's book The Advantage, for some perspective.  Alignment is about "connecting with your why".  Patrick puts it this way, "Great leaders see themselves as Chief Reminding Officers as much as anything else.”

A great leader reminds the team why they do what they do.  

This affirms why the best companies are truly mission-driven.  Millennials more than any other group remind us of this.  Younger workers crave purpose more than just the hacks to shave a few minutes off their next meeting or the keys to getting to inbox zero.  

My own "hmpf" on that Friday was fairly normal after all.  After I had made sense of it, I decided to revisit my quarterly goals and my own mission statement.  These would, no matter what, inform my productivity.  I was resolute.

The weeks afterwards were markedly different.  The productivity remained but this time was animated by something deeper.  

When you feel fragmented or empty and you've been producing solid work, there are a few things you can do to reconnect with your own mission and purpose:

  1. Spend some time alone.  Get with your thoughts and write.  Why were you feeling shallow?  What is it about your work that you enjoy?  What part of it bothers you?
  2. Get away.  It may be time for a day off or a vacation.  If you've been running on empty, you just may be tired.  If so, stop working and recharge your batteries.
  3. Seek the advice of someone you trust.  Maybe you just need to talk to someone without being judged.  For me, seeing my life coach is invaluable and encourages me to reconnect my work with my mission.

Productivity isn't enough.  Connecting your work with your why, now that's where the magic happens. 

How to Paper-proof Your Office

What does your office look like?  Is it neat and clean?  Is it messy and disorganized?  

Each of us has a few habits associated with our offices that we might not want others to know about.  You know what I mean: the pile of papers by your credenza, the extra pair of shoes under your desk, the batch of receipts near your phone.  

I have a few of these too... except that I'm not going to share them with you!

What I can share is one simple habit that works for me.  It's so easy that you might overlook it but trust me, it works every time.  

So here's the tip: don't put any papers on the floor.  This won't paper-proof your whole office but it will put a dent in things.

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When you put papers on the floor that belong on a desk (or in a drawer), their value decreases.  When things find their way on the floor, you have to step over them.  When you have to step over things in your office, you slow down and so does your work.  

Not good.

Do you want to know the biggest reason why papers shouldn't go on the floor? In my experience, when I put papers on the floor, I never end up tackling them.  Despite all of my good intentions, the papers just never get touched.

Will power isn't as easy to activate as we'd like. 

If you have a habit of letting papers get on the floor, you have three options:

1. Toss it.
2. Deal with it.
3. Get comfortable with clutter and therefore decreased productivity.  

With all of that said, what's in your office?

6 Lessons From Working at Home

It's been, more or less, six months since I began working from home.  

In full disclosure, I do have another office that I use occasionally during the week; that is five minutes away.  I also use a local Panera and the town library. All of these locations make up my "office".

Before I started working from home, I would read about people who just loved it.  They raved about the flexibility, the personalization, and the deep productivity it afforded.  It seemed like the way to go.  As an introvert, I've always enjoyed time in quiet spaces so I figured I would give it a try.

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The lessons have been many.  Here are six that stand out:

  1. It's unglamorous.  When no one is around and no one does the old  "got a minute" interruption, it's just you and your work.  At the end of the day, you need to crank work and get things done.  There's nothing sexy about that and you won't get bonus points for wearing a nicer tie.  That's not to say that it's bad, just different.  It's you and your work.
  2. Being able to change your location is magical.  For me, working for three hour blocks of time works well.  I can get in a morning block of work, take lunch, and then get another three hour block of time before dinner.  I suspect that six strong hours of work is way more than I ever got in a traditional office layout.  
  3. You begin to appreciate time.  I track my hours each day.  Even a 15 minute block of time gets put down in the book.  I've realized that, when you work from home, you appreciate what you can get done in a small (or large) block of time.  Before, the parts of the day just blended together.
  4. You realize how much junk fills the day of the average office worker.  I don't have a commute which means that I don't have to  wake up early (although I still do but now it's by choice).  I don't have to add forty minutes to my morning and forty minutes home.  I don't have to spend 15-30 minutes each day with chit-chat.  There are very few interruptions.  As I think back to work in a traditional office space, I realize just how much "stuff" fills the average day and it's not very productive.  
  5. Themed days are a must.  Each of my days is "built" around a particular theme.  Monday is for content creation.  Friday is for administrative tasks.  The days in the middle have their own themes.  Theming is important because it gives structure to your week and gives you a roadmap of what you want to accomplish.  
  6. Most meetings are useless.  I still have meetings but now they are via Skype, Zoom or a conference call.  They have a set time to begin and often end early.  They are pleasant and typically quite effective.  

I'm still figuring this out.  For those who have worked from home for years, I admire your wisdom and hope to keep learning from your experience.  

How about you?  Where do you work best?  Of the six lessons above, do any strike a chord with you?