I’m exhausted.
Three kids. Family trips. Endless work in between. Things changed.
Change is good. The trips made memories of a lifetime. We enjoyed fun times. But too much change is exhausting. We need those down times when nothing much is going on, and there is not much change from day to day.
I’ve been writing another book. To be honest, I haven’t written much of it over the past month. There have been too many distractions and “urgent” tasks that superseded my work on the book. I haven’t been getting enough sleep. I haven’t been eating well. And I haven’t been exercising like I should.
But once everything settled down, I got a whole lot done. Through all those weeks of getting not much done, I realized the solution to my problems. I wish I had discovered this earlier.
The solution was to set Daily Minimums. What is the least I need to get done in a day to feel like it was a productive day?
Find your Daily Minimums and execute them each day. Finish them as early in the day as you can. Then your day will feel productive, and you can use the rest of the time to do even more.
Make your Daily Minimums quick and easy to do. You can always work more on them later after you’ve completed the minimal amount of work for the day.
I have a minimal exercise routine I do every day. I stretch for a few minutes, do some kettlebell warmups, some squats, and some pushups. The whole routine takes 10 minutes, and I do it first thing in the morning. That way, even if I don’t find time to go to the gym later, I can at least say I got some exercise.
I try to eat a healthy breakfast every morning. Then if my willpower slips later in the day and I have pizza with the kids, I know that I ate healthy for at least half the day.
Before the kids wake up each morning, I write for at least 10 minutes. I write about whatever comes to my mind. I don’t plan on ever publishing any of the writing I do in the morning (and most of it is garbage anyways). But after I complete it I can say I wrote that day. As long as I do this, I can say I write every day.
Doing these small Daily Minimums gets you used to the consistency. It creates a rhythm that gets things moving and sets you up for doing much more work later. Even if you ONLY do your minimal work for the day and nothing else, it all adds up to significant work over time.
Imagine if you only wrote 100 words a day as a writer. That’s easy. It only takes a few minutes. But that small amount of writing adds up to over 36,000 words a year. That’s enough to publish as a book. Writing 100 words per day enables you to publish a book a year. Now imagine how prolific you would be if you wrote 500 words per day!
What are your Daily Minimums?
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