Work to keep a schedule and stick to it. Balance your time to fill your cup and focus on your business. Get fresh air and sunlight, hydrate, write down your top goals of the day & priority tasks so you can focus on the most important work each day.

Sleep and rest is important if you want to keep pace and not burn yourself out. Also, noise-cancelling headphones are the best thing that’s ever been invented.

I think most of the comments cover very crucial points! Discipline, consistency, workout, eat and sleep at set times - to quote the top few. Of course, I don’t want to repeat what is already said.

What I can do is to give my opinion on how to achieve those, or at least part of those, in a more hacky/lazy/unstructured way. It ended up being a long post. For it to be worth it, if you wonder about my credibility : I am a researcher with some keywords involving computer science, neuroscience, decision making etc. Not that it means something directly, but for you to know that I am a decently functioning professional who is happy with my engagements day-to-day and fairly productive.

Please don’t forget to refer to the P.S below if you wonder what my credibility is. The message is don’t target perfection. Target consistency. The key is to minimize internal conflicts arising due to trying to be disciplined.

- Wake up at the same/similar time everyday, with a possibly soothing alarm tone rather than a blasting one (more on this in the last point related to sleep). Hard rule, minimize snoozing, maximum once. Few things help - keeping your sports shoes, morning shorts/change of boxers, fresh socks by bed side

Morning

- Get on to the street, walk around for at least 10 minutes. No particular goal, doesn’t matter if you just make circles around a couple of blocks.

Core productive day time : [I am not going to specify every activity, but mention some general rules] see below. Overall, have a target - 6pm, 7pm, 7:30, gym class time, meeting a friend time whatever works.

Evening : Here are the key things.

- When ever you ‘core productive day time ends’ , think of dinner (on days when there is no social engagement). The key is eat as early as you can 6:30, 7, 8 max.

- The idea is to maximize the gap between eating and going to bed

- After eating, if you have watching habits, great, have a deadline like 10pm.

- standard stuff - have an hour before you actually sleep, for non-watching stuff - tv or computer doesn’t matter. Laundry? Folding clothes? Arranging home? Dishes? Oh yeah, post dinner 10 minute walk. Basically something mechanical, menial.

- About sleeping, trick: start reading in bed, 30 mins before when you want to sleep. Play crossword, puzzle if you want with low light on phone. Again standard stuff, please no scrolling.

- key: Alarm : When things work well, when you can be confident that say in 30mins of lying in bed I fall asleep (while puzzling or reading), have an alarm ‘after’ 6 hours or 7.5 hours or 9hrs from that time ‘instead of’ AT a certain time. E.g I lay on bed at 10, typically I expect to fall asleep by 10:30, my alarm would be at 6AM or 7:30 AM instead of 6:30 or 7:30 AM.

Core productive day time :

- Delay food intake until 10/11, drink water. Depending on your coffee habits, may be have a good one, but one.

- Also, I discourage working out during this time. In general, your brain could be at maximum efficiency during this morning time. So try to do productive mental work between waking up and 1 or 2 PM.

- About working it self, if you follow pomodoro timers or ToDos etc. good for you. If not, a manageable way is to make mental checkpoints.

- Let me open a notepad for this XXX plan and then I will have my coffee.

- Let me code this small feature then I will have cereals…

- For coders I discourage checking emails, but if that’s part of your job, that could be a task.

Remember, I am not framing as some kind of task / reward system. That’s the point, minimize logic/rationale/theory - just simple mental checkpoints - that is to give much needed breaks without having to be strict about timings.

Also at the beginning of the day, schedule (again, if you use tools, great, else, “mental” schedule) all the admin/housekeeping/chores to post 1 or 2 pm - email replies, online shopping, paying bills

Say you are done with chores, step out for a coffee, even sit some where, and do what? Depends - do nothing. Or mentally go through what you’d like to do for the rest of the day.

Come back home, get back to work, again, when you start, have a “mental” checkpoint - so and so task and then I will have a tea, or an apple. Then resume.

Depending on your dinner plans, cooking? Then mini tasks between steps. I put milk on stove on low and finish a small task. Ordering - the same, between tasks. Another task until the order comes.

P.S:

I do most of these, but let me tell you upfront I don’t run some super successful business but I don’t see how it would differ if I were to drop my multiple engagements and focus on one business. Feel free to disagree there. In short, I can tell you that I lead a happy day almost everyday doing my research work, catching up with family/friends on phone calls, coding on 1,2 side projects, step out for coffee, spend the evenings with my partner from dinner until going to bed.

I agree with the rest of the comments about building structure and habits.
Have you watched one of the latest Kurzgezagt on habit building? I personally found it quite helpful on this topic.
Best of luck on the journey!

Exercise and eating right (ie; not over-eating) is something you do for yourself, just like your business is something you do for yourself in many levels. You need to convince yourself of this, because it’s true, and find activities that you don’t hate (so you actually do them regularly) and ways of regulating your caloric intake (get energy-dense, low nutrient foods out of your house, cut way back on drinking alcohol, etc). After a few weeks, you should start to see results. Use that as proof/inspiration that what you’re doing is working and give yourself credit for the success.

Plan your day the night before!!

Know what you are eating and when, when you plan to exercise, what you will do on breaks ie. go for a walk around the block or sit outside and have a cuppa.

Then just get up and roll it on out.

MENTAL HEALTH CHECK:

When you get up, Evaluate what your feeling, do you feel empty, do you feel motivated, tired, then rest for a while, its simple as that, check your mental health, and if not doing good maybe stressed then its fine to be lazy for awhile, because mood whether you like it or not will always influence you so stop stressing and get some rest.

Dont be a bi*** and try to follow routines so strictly, make it what you want, and what fiits you and know when your tired and slow down, and slowly speed up, basically have rest, but have discipline know when you feel accomplished or not.

“It takes time” I have been saddened that my mom and dad are still working, I hate seeing them come home tired, I want to give them my best, and then when you do that you lose yourself, I got a 1 month depression from that, so be hard af but be soft too, so when your doing tasks be strict squeeze as much of productivity you can, and at break times if you have a routine, evaluate what you did and if you feel good keep continuing, and at night time if you feel good then keep going, if you feel sad try to do as best as you can still and if its continuing you need to rest before burnout gets real, take your time, your not in a race everytime, just keep moving and its okay to do a gas refuel every now and then.

Use Notion and eat healthy workout socialize

If you want business partner in Tanzania please contact me juzimba37@gmail.com

Personally, my day to day life is consistently busy, but consistent nonetheless. Hopefully this will help you

6:15 AM - wake up I have a light breakfast and a coffee after making my bed and getting ready for the day. Commute 1 hour to university while listening to a podcast The daytime is dedicated to getting ahead on university, and attending classes. Commute 1 hour home also listening to podcasts I will work a few hours on the farm to help out at home, eat dinner with family.

HERE IS WHERE THE REAL WORK STARTS

30 minutes of body weight workouts mandatory, 30 minutes basketball training

And the rest of my evening (typically 4-5 hours) dedicated to moving the organization forward.

The day often has communication and planning for business but the focus is opening the evening so it’s free of school work.

I then focus on getting a minimum of 6 hours of good sleep. I know more is required but right now it’s important to grow the business

You can see that I have all the tasks taken care of while working on the family farm, working out, playing a team sport, family dinner, and business. Sleep is crucial and my meals are lighter until dinner. Dinner is a healthy home cooked meal.

Hope this helps,

Landon

I was in a similar boat. I tend to eat after gym workouts so try scheduling that some time in the afternoon. Also, schedule time with friends to play sports- I’m playing soccer, tennis and golf.