Hopefully, everyone is having a great week so far!  I want to share with you an article that I was just featured in. This is a really great interview on how to manage time and stress in a world that’s increasingly chaotic, with less attention span, more priorities, and higher levels of stress and pressure. The article is posted on Thrive Global. You can read it here. We talk about the strategies and tips that I use to manage my time. Running several companies I have a limited amount of time in a day and a week. How I handle and mitigate stress is critical for me to see continued growth.

One tip I have adopted that helps me stay balanced, manage my time and priorities is having a strong morning and evening routine. By that I mean there are 11 things that I try to accomplish on a daily basis. If I can hit nine or ten of those, I’ve had a great day. Most days I hit all 11. Some days when I’m traveling and have a really high demand on my time, I’ll hit eight.

So here are my eleven tasks I like to accomplish daily:

1) Wake Up on Time

The first one is to wake up on time. I try to wake up really early, usually around 5:00 AM. This helps me start my day and designate a couple of hours for my morning routine.

2) Exercise

The second thing is exercise. I like to exercise at least 5 times a week between the gym and running.

3) Meditate

The third thing is to meditate for at least 5 to 10 minutes every morning. I find the morning to be best because you’ve got time to really center your thoughts and yourself before the chaos and busyness of the day starts.

4) Read My Personal Rules

The fourth thing I like to do is read my personal rules. These are things that are important to me that I like to follow. These could also be affirmations for you.

5) Take My Vitamins & Supplements

The fifth thing is to take my vitamins and supplements. This is fairly straightforward and simple for me to achieve each day.

6) Read

The sixth is spend 45 minutes to an hour reading the news. I like to read the Wall Street Journal and I’m committed to reading 24 books this year (two books a month). My smaller goal is to read about 50% of a book each week. Dividing my goals into smaller wins helps me stay on track and see continued progress.

7) Drinks Lots of Water

The next thing for me is to drink five glasses of water. A little side note is I really love sparkling water and seltzer, so I drink a lot of LaCroix (like five or six a day). Make sure that you have no calories, no sugar, and stay hydrated. This is very important for your brain health and functioning as well as for your body.

8) Eat Clean

The next thing is to eat clean and healthy all day. I have a pescatarian diet, so I eat a lot of vegetables, fish, fruits, foods with lower carbs and fats, as well as no meat.

9) Follow My Calendar

Next up is to follow my calendar. That’s important, right? What’s on our calendar gets done. Stay time blocked and focused on those things that we put on our calendar. Also, I make sure that only important things go onto my calendar to avoid unnecessary tasks that will inhibit me from achieving the most important goals for the day.

10) Achieve My Individual Goals for Each Day

The next is to achieve my individual goals for the day. I use a high performance planner by my mentor and executive business coach, Brendon Burchard. I very highly recommend taking a look at it. It’s called The High Performance Planner and you can find it on Amazon. It’s a great planner. It starts at the beginning of the day and ends the day with several questions and ratings, as well as a priority list for goals for the day.

11) Complete My Evening Routine

The last thing that I like to do as a daily habit is to make sure that I hit my evening routine. This includes ending work by about 8:00 PM and having some time to read my book, listen to a podcast, and unwind. Sometimes I go out to dinner with friends. I really try to not work after about 8:00 or 8:30. Typically I work longer than most on my days in the office, but again, you may be in different stages of your life depending on what priorities you have with family, children, et cetera. For me, working 10, 12 hour days is kind of the norm and it’s the stage I’m in. It doesn’t feel like work, because I love what I do, which I’m grateful for as well.

Bringing It All Together

If you can hit these (and again your habits don’t have to be these, these are just a template I use), it will allow you to stay centered at the beginning and end of your day, and live and perform at a higher level. These are simple health care, self-care, mindset, and mindfulness practices and habits that don’t take a ton of time. All of these together might take two hours a day, depending on how long you exercise for. Two hours a day. If you’re up for usually 15 to 18 hours, this is not a lot of time to really be performing and living in a better way, more intentionally.

You also want to plan some downtime for yourself where you’re completely off the grid, so to speak. Scheduling vacations first is another tip that’s important. I like to do that on a quarterly basis and then take some long weekends throughout as well. Usually, I do at least one to two trips abroad to new countries per year.

For more information on tips like this check out this article on Thrive Global. It just released the other day. I talk about this in a little more depth, some pro tips and strategies that I use to better manage my time and reduce and manage stress in an increasingly stressful world. Hopefully this was helpful. Stay tuned for what’s coming next!

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