In this guide, I’ll walk you through a simple process to create your own mid-day routine.
Why: To make sure the second half of the day goes well regardless what happened in the first half.
Pre-planning
Step 1: Decide when to do it.
In an ideal situation, you’d complete your mid-day routine at a natural breaking point. For most, this will be around lunch time. But I don’t recommend doing it while you eat.
Instead, use your lunch as either the trigger for the routine or the reward. So, either complete the routine first and then eat your lunch, or eat your lunch and flow directly into the mid-day routine.
Step 2: Choose your goal(s).
The general purpose of this routine is to provide a moment to reset your day and make sure that, no matter how the morning went, you’re in a good position to finish strong.
But, you may also want to incorporate some other goals like a bit of exercise or relaxation—or something else entirely—into your own mid-day routine.
Now’s the time to decide what you actually want to accomplish so you can plan out what you’ll do each day and how long it will take.
Now, here are the steps to complete to set the rest of your day up for success.
Implementation
Step 1: Review the first half of the day.
If you follow the advice in The Systems Course, then you made a plan for your day already—either in the morning or the night before.
Now’s the time to compare that plan against your actual performance.
- Did you finish everything you wanted to for the morning?
- Was it just the right amount of work?
- Could you have done more?
- Was it too much and you shouldn’t have tried to cram so much in?
And acknowledge any unforseen issues that came up that might have knocked you off course. Should you have seen them coming and planned for them or were they entirely out of the blue?
Once you’ve completed this step, you’ll be able to make a better plan for the rest of the day.
Step 2: Assess how you’re feeling now.
Take a moment to figure out how you’re feeling. What kind of mood are you in. And what’s driving those feelings?
Having some data every day to give you an idea of what might be happening in the morning that affects how you feel in the afternoon is useful information. You can use it to make better plans to avoid things that negatively affect your mood and performance. It will help you better arrange your daily work so that the right things are happening at the right time.
Step 3: Consider new information.
You now have the experience of half the day you didn’t have when you made your initial plan. What information do you have now that you didn’t have when you created the plan?
Based on that information, decide if there are any important changes you need to make to the plan for the rest of the day.
Step 4: Make a plan for the rest of the day.
With the previous steps done, you’re now ready to make a strong plan to get you through the rest of the day and make it a success.
You’ve set aside any problems that affected you in the morning, made yourself aware of new information that could affect you going forward, and now it’s time to take all those inputs and make any adjustments you need to your plan for the rest of the day so that when you get to the end, you feel like you accomplished what you intended to.
Good luck!