The environment you’re in strongly dictates how productive you are.

You must control for:

• Morning routine
  • what do you do when you wake up? building habits of doing things as simple as taking a shower and making breakfast could change your whole day due to its kick-start
  • do you have a thing you’re waking up for? you need to know what you’re doing in the morning before you wake up! (tip: commit to a meeting/workout with someone)
  • do you know what you’re wearing? this is less important for some, but in any case you should at least have clean and ready laundry. Running around preparing could -again- influence your whole day based on its kick-start
• Work place
  • where do you work? your work spot has to be defined and comfortable. It must have everything you need (e.g. water, coffee, papers, outlet, etc…)
  • do you have your work station ready? if not, you should at least have your bag ready to go or to be ready in seconds
• Work itself
  • what the heck are you working on? you should have a list of goals for the day, week, or month that you address. Or a to-do list as a breakdown of those goals if that works better for you
  • a very interesting habit to instill is to write the day’s goals as part of your morning routine, or by a certain hour
  • check the Rawi model for getting shit done that uses weekly checklists
• Recreational activities
  • are you doing things other than work? Doing such activities (esp. sports) would motivate you to work more because you’d value time more, let alone feel refreshed and energized
  • do you have those planned in advance? even if a day before. You don’t have to fill your schedule, but put it in there
• Meeting people
  • very strong tool to reflect through people & either feed off their energy, or use what you find negative to motivate yourself to work on bettering yourself
  • not to mention the benefit of seeing and catching up with your loved ones. It’s rejuvenating
  • tip: stay tf away from those who suck your energy and leave you drained
• Evening routine
  • what you do before hitting the bed? it could strongly influence your kick-start for the next day. Did you do your errands? prepared your schedule and goals for the next day? Don’t sleep until that’s done
  • are you getting enough sleep? nobody in this day and age can dictate exactly when they go to bed and wake up with ruthless discipline unless they’re fine killing their social life (and occasionally some of their business prospects as well) BUT you should do your best to get in bed early enough to get 6-8 hours of sleep depending on what works best for you

I find my most productive days to be those which include every ingredient of this recipe. I wrote it here as a reference, mainly for myself, as well as others to revisit whenever one feels a lack of productivity. Not all of your days shall be productive, but if you can make most of them so, why the heck not?

Farewell.