Two Nighttime Activities to 10X Your Productivity Tomorrow
By: Laura Winter
Tags: Routine, Habits, Productivity, Lifestyle, Self Improvement

Two Nighttime Activities to 10X Your Productivity Tomorrow

How a night routine can set you up for a better day

Photo by Tamar Waskey on Unsplash

I never thought that doing something at night could improve my tomorrow. I always thrived on a morning routine that got me out the door on time and still left some room for writing before work. It was my way of incorporating a personal goal into each day. But now that I’m writing and working from home every day, I needed a new method to help me stay focused and get my work done. Without these activities, I’d be working from the minute I sat down at the computer to the minute I went to bed, wasting time and only getting about half the things done that I needed to accomplish.

Now, I’m on track to hit half a million words from June until the end of December. I’ve just published my tenth book (nine this year), will have five more released by December, and will have written another three (at least) before the end of 2020.

The secret lies in my night routine. It’s simple — two activities that make my next day insanely productive. Depending on how much fiction versus nonfiction I write, I can average between 3K and 8K words a day and still get other administrative stuff done and take a full hour for lunch, all before my husband gets home at 6PM.

Here’s how I make it happen with my nighttime routine.

Plan

It’s as simple and as complicated as that. Every evening, before I head upstairs to bed, I sit down with my Passion Planner (affl) and plan out my next day. I take into account the writing I’ve done that day, determine what needs to be done next, and schedule it in my planner.

The first thing is to write down my top three most important tasks with as much detail as possible. I take out all decisions for what needs to get done. Instead of saying that I need to write one chapter of my next book, I detail exactly what chapter I’ll be writing. If I need to have an article written, I know the title and the subpoints so there’s no wasting time researching what to write the next day. If it’s administrative, I know exactly what goes where and when it needs to be done. No more wasting time trying to decide what to do next.

Next, I transfer all my word counts or any goals/tasks that I didn’t get done the day before. Obviously this is more of my personal touch, but I like to start my day knowing where I’m at and even give myself a goal to hit. I’m getting close to 300K words written so I’ll take one day and try to stretch my word count to hit that number. It’s also useful to fill in any time blocks I know I won’t be working in. I always schedule lunch, because if I don’t I’ll be tempted to write through it, and I have a few virtual evening events throughout the week. One of them is writing group, so often I’ll leave myself some space during the day so I’m not exhausted by the time that rolls around.

Planning is also great if you have habits or other things you like to do. Making time and protecting time to get done what you need to do is critical for success. Scheduling it out improves the chances you’ll do them. It also means you’ll waste less time around those activities.

Journal

After I’ve settled into bed, I love pulling out my journal and recapping my day. Morning pages are not possible with the things I have to do in the morning so I save mine for the end of the day. It adds to my hour or so of no screens before bed. I shut off all distractions and just sit with my pen and paper.

As someone with ADHD and an anxious mind, decompressing after a day of work is extremely useful. And since my mind is always spinning, it can be nearly impossible to settle down before sleep. Journaling is my kind of meditation because I use it to write out my thoughts. If I know they exist on paper, I don’t have to worry about forgetting a really good idea. I can also use it as a second planner and sort through my ideas. Often, I’ll plot out my next few scenes, in brief form, and use that as a way to relax. If I forget what direction I wanted to go, I can always check my journal.

It’s also a great resource for writing out thoughts and recapping my day. Often I’ll talk about the successes I had or where I found struggles throughout my day. It will usually lead to me coming up with new ideas for how to handle distractions or plans for trying out something different. Once I get everything out (or my hand starts to cramp), I’ll set it aside and feel so much better about closing my eyes. A calm mind means I can fall asleep faster and don’t feel like a zombie in the morning. A good night’s sleep means a more productive day.