The surprising habits that are making you tired

 

Source: www.ineedmotivation.com

• Most people have experienced feelings of tiredness despite a good sleep 
• Drinking alcohol and using our phones before bed can contribute to fatigue
• Changing a few small daily habits is an easy way to increase energy levels 

When energy levels take a mid-afternoon nosedive it can leave you feeling irritable and groggy. Understandable, maybe, if your day has been preceded by a very late night. But why is it we sometimes still feel tired even when we have enjoyed a nice, long sleep?

From chaotic desks to eating dinner too late, it turns out that losing sleep is not the only thing that can leave us feeling lethargic or fatigued.

1. DEHYDRATION 

It's important to keep an eye on water intake, especially in the summer months Even mild dehydration, defined as as little as 1.5% loss in normal water volume, can alter a person's mood, mental function, and indeed energy levels.

According to researchers at the Natural Hydration Council, dehydration can lower your blood volume and, as a result, the body has to work harder to supply the body with nutrients and oxygen, making you feel tired. The NHS recommends that women should drink about 1.6 litres of fluid a day, and men about 2 litres per day. TIP: Keep a bottle of water on you at all times and remind yourself to fill up throughout the day.

2. ALCOHOL

 

Many people think that having a glass of wine or a couple of beers at night will help them sleep, but contrary to popular belief, this can actual hinder a good night's rest.

While the initial effects of drinking can contribute to drowsiness, studies by Washington State University have proven that alcohol consumption will lead to a lighter, lower quality of sleep, interrupted by frequent awakenings. This leaves you waking up feeling just as tired as when you went to bed.

TIP: Ditch the nightcap and opt for a glass of milk instead.

3. MOBILE PHONES 

Many of us are guilty of getting into bed then checking our phones until we feel tired. But it turns out that this can be more disruptive for our sleep cycle than we think. Scrolling through a mobile phone has the tendency to mentally engage users when their brains should be winding down and preparing for rest. Furthermore, the blue light emitted from devices such as smart phones and televisions inhibits the hormone melatonin, which regulates sleep and waking cycles.

These factors make it more difficult to fall asleep in the first place, can lead to feelings of drowsiness the next day and, according to a study by Michigan State University, those that use their smart phones past 9pm will often pay for it the next day by feeling fatigued and restless. TIP: Set your alarm and turn over your phone after nine o'clock. 

4. NOT ENOUGH EXERCISE 

Nobody feels like exercising when they've finished a long day at work, but it turns out skipping a workout to conserve energy has exactly the opposite effect.

A study by the University of Georgia proved that adults who exercised three days a week for 20 minutes at a time reported feeling less fatigued and more energised over a period of six weeks.
The overall study showed that those who exercised lightly reduced fatigue symptoms by a huge 65 per cent.

TIP: Try and go for a gentle half-an-hour jog at least three times a week in order to gradually get those energy levels up.

5. OVERTRAINING

Surprisingly, an overly vigorous workout doesn't always lead to deeper sleep or a better nights rest. According to Dr. Richard A. Dicenso over-exercising can push the body's response system too far, causing it to send out stress hormones such as cortisol, which makes it hard to fall asleep and can even lead to long-term fatigue.

TIP: Opt for light exercise rather than burning yourself out with long periods of heavy training.

6. EATING DINNER TOO LATE 

Getting home after a late night will tempt many people turn to the fridge for some late night indulgence, but this could lead to you feeling exhausted the next day. Consuming a heavy meal too close to bedtime can be disruptive for digestive systems, causing indigestion and even heartburn, making you too uncomfortable to fall asleep.

TIP: Ensure your evening meal is consumed way before 8pm to avoid any digestive upset. 

7. LOW IRON LEVELS

If you're a woman and you're feeling more exhausted than usual it could be down to an iron deficiency. Iron helps transport oxygen around the body via the red blood cells. According to WebMD, without sufficient oxygen in the body, muscle use and even brain function can be depleted, leading to low levels of energy.

TIP: Up your intake by regularly including iron-rich foods in your diet, such as cereals, bread and brown rice, and also green leafy vegetables such has watercress and kale.

8. MEDICATION

Starting a new course of prescription medication can sometimes leave you feeling drowsy and lethargic. Beta-blockers, for instance, are drugs commonly used for high blood pressure and work by blocking hormones such as adrenaline to decrease the activity of the heart. According to the NHS this automatically leads to greater feelings of tiredness.

TIP: If you're concerned about the side effects of medication ask your doctor if any alternatives are available to counteract low energy levels. 

9. CAFFEINE

While many people opt for a cup of coffee to provide them with a pickup, it turns out that too much could be detrimental for energy levels.

Caffeine is a stimulant found in coffee, and according to Natural News, signals for the production of adrenalin, which keeps the brain alert and awake. When the adrenalin wears off later, especially after excessive coffee consumption, you can be left feeling fatigued, irritable and general drowsy.

TIP: Limit coffee intake to one a day, preferably in the morning, in order to allow the body to regulate the level of adrenalin by the time you're ready to hit the pillow.

10. CLUTTER 

As well as making it harder to find things, a cluttered desk can also lead to a mid-afternoon drop in energy. A study at the Neuroscience Institute at Princeton University has shown that 'multiple stimuli', ie chaotic clutter, can cause the brain to feel overwhelmed and restrict your ability to focus which can lead to you feeling frustrated and in turn, fatigued.

Sprucing up your working space, meanwhile, means that paperwork and everything you need is more accessible, and also removes any potential distractions.

TIP: Clear up a small portion of your desk and see if it makes any improvement in mood and productivity.

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6 Proven Ways To Make New Habits Stick

Source: functionallies.com

If you have been trying to cultivate new habits with little success, then you might find these very useful. These habits are not rocket science – they are easy to understand, apply and have worked tremendously for me.

Here they are:

1. Know the Real Reason Why Your Habit Didn’t Stick Previously

 

Address the root cause of the issue, not the effect. Desperately battling with yourself every morning to wake up at 5:30am is to address the effect. Understanding why you keep failing to wake up at 5:30am is to address the cause.

For example, I couldn’t wake up early for the longest time ever, and all I kept doing is to keep trying and failing the next day. This would continue on for several months until I finally realized it was just going nowhere. I began to start analyzing my situation to understand why I couldn’t wake up early, through a self-questioning process. I probed into the situation, and asked myself “why” this was happening to drill down to the root cause.

Below is an example of the drilling process:

• Why can’t I wake up early?
  • Because I’m tired.
• Why am I tired?
  • Because I didn’t have enough sleep.
• Why didn’t I have enough sleep?
  • Because I slept late.
• Why did I sleep late?
  • Because I had too many things to do.
• Why did I have so many things to do?
  • Because I can’t finish them.
• Why can’t I finish them?
  • Because I schedule more tasks than I can accomplish for the day.

Getting down to this root cause helped me realize two things (1) All our habits are tied to one another (sleeping time, waking time, timeliness) (2) I underestimate the time taken to finish the tasks (and subsequently overestimate how fast I can do those tasks). Many times, I would target to finish multiple projects in 1 day, which wasn’t possible at all.

This meant that to make my waking early habit stick, (1) I need to change habits that are related to waking early (see Tip #2) and (2) I have to be more realistic in my planning. Rather than stuff in so many tasks for a day and not finishing them, now I go for a challenging yet achievable schedule and complete my tasks accordingly.

Keep asking why to drill down to the root reason. Once you get to the real cause, you can immediately resolve the issue.

 

2. Pick Habits that Reinforce Each Other

 

Our habits are not standalone; they are interlinked. Some habits have a stronger linkage with each other than others. For example, sleeping early and waking early are obviously linked to each other, while sleeping early and reading a book a day might not be so closely related. If you want to cultivate a habit, identify the other habits that are tied with it and make a holistic change. These habits will reinforce each other to help make the change seamless.

For example, my new habits to: (a) Wake up early at 5am (b) Sleep before 12am (c) Be on time (d) Meditate (e) Have raw food diet are all interlinked.

• Waking up early means I more time to do my tasks, which helps me to sleep earlier in the night. This helps me to wake up early the next day.
• Being on time helps me to get my tasks completed on time, which helps me adhere to the day’s schedule. This means my sleeping time and subsequently my waking time does not get affected.
• Meditating clears out mental clutter and reduces the amount of sleep I need. Usually I sleep about pro6-10 hours, but on the nights I meditate, I require about 5-6 hours.
• Switching to a raw vegan diet has helped to increase my mental clarity, which meant I don’t need to sleep as much as before. I’m not saying that you need to go raw vegan just to cultivate a habit of sleeping/waking early, just that I noticed this particular benefit when I switched to this diet. You can sleep and wake up early perfectly fine by changing other habits.

 

3. Plan For Your Habits (Right down to the timings)

 

Having a schedule lets you know when you are on or off track for your habits. For the 1st day of my new lifestyle, I did a full-day planning and continued thereafter for all other days.
What I do is this:

1. On the night before, put together a list all the tasks I need to get done for the next day. This includes what’s on my calendar (I use Gcal).
2. Batch them into (a) Major projects, (b) Medium sized tasks and (c) Small, administrative activities
3. Slot them into my schedule for the day. Major projects would have most amount of time assigned. The principle I usually go by is 60-30-10 (% time spent) for a-b-c groups respectively.
4. Be aware of how much time each task requires. If it helps, most of the time we underestimate the time we need. Make it a realistic yet challenging time to work towards. Usually I assign a 5-10 minutes buffer time in between tasks to account for the transition from 1 task to the next.
5. Assign exact timings for when each task starts and ends. For example, 9am to 10:30am for Project A, 12:30-1:30pm for lunch, 6:30-7:30pm for commute.
6. If there are more tasks to be done than my schedule allows, I’ll deprioritize the unimportant ones and put them off to another day.

With all this planning done, when the next day comes all I have to do is to follow the schedule to a tee. I keep a close watch on the timing to ensure I’m on time. 5 minutes before it’s up, I do a wrap up and start transiting to the next task on the list.

The beauty of having a precise schedule is it helps me know exactly when I’m taking more time than desired, and this helps me work on being more efficient. There are some timings which absolutely have to be protected, such as my sleeping/waking times and appointment times, so in that sense the time allocated on my tasks are fixed. That means I have to work more efficiently.

It may seem like a hassle, but it really isn’t. It just takes me about 10 minutes to get each day’s schedule done. Not surprisingly, I have allocate time in my daily schedule to do my scheduling for the next day (11-11:10pm). All you have to do is create a template once, and then you can reapply this template for the other days. There will be similar items across all out days that can be reapplied, such as waking/breakfast/commuting/working/dinner/sleeping times, so it’s really very straight forward.

If you don’t plan for when exactly to get the habit done and instead just arbitrarily say that you want it to be done sometime today, then there’s a very high chance it might not get done. This is why most people’s habits don’t stick. Other things will invariably keep popping in and you’d engage them without realizing it and throw your schedule off track. From there, other things get pushed back and you never get to carry out your habit.

 

4. Stay Ahead of Your Schedule

 

I found it’s extremely motivating to stay ahead. Waking up early at 5am means I’m ahead of most people in the world (and myself too, if I were to stick to my old schedule), and that motivates me to work fast and stay ahead. What helps me continue this momentum is that I end my tasks earlier and start the next task before the scheduled timing. By ensuring I stay ahead of my schedule, I’m naturally motivated to work on all the things I have planned, including my habits. There’s no resistance to get them started at all.
If a task is taking more time than needed, then I make a choice. Either I:

1. Hurry up and get it done
2. Deprioritize the unnecessary or
3. Borrow time out for my later tasks to continue working on the current one. This also means I have to work faster for the remainder of the day.

This decision-making process is important, because otherwise you will end up playing catch-up for the rest of the day, which affects all your planned habits/activities. Subsequently, it also affects your will to maintain your habits. Stay ahead of your schedule and you will find it easier to stay motivated.

 

5. Track Your Habits

 

Tracking keeps you accountable to your habits. I have a whiteboard in my bedroom which I use to track my habits. On the whiteboard, I drew a large table, split by days (21 days to cultivate a new habit) and by habits. For the days where I do the habit, I will give it a check. For the days I don’t, I make a cross. It’s very satisfying to do the checks every time you finish a habit! You can also track your habits on paper or in your computer.
Here are some great habit trackers online:

• HabitForge – Tracks new habits through a 21-day period. If you miss the habit for 1 day, it’ll restart.
• Rootein – Unlike Habit Forge, this is an ongoing habit tracker. There is also a mobile version for you to track your habits on the go.
• Joe’s Goals – Same as Rootein. There’s an option to place multiple checks on the same goal for extra-productive days.

 

6. Engage People Around You

 

Engagement can occur on 2 levels – (a) Active engagement, where you inform your friends who might be interested in and cultivate the habit together with them or (b) Passive engagement, where you let others know about your plans and having them morally support you.

I had both forms of support in my habit change. 2 days before I started my lifestyle revamp program, I posted an article on my blog, The Personal Excellence Blog, on the new 21-day Lifestyle Revamp Program I was taking on. I wrote in detail about the rationale behind the program, the benefits, the habits I was taking on and how I was going to achieve my goals. I also invited them to join me too in cultivating new habits. Much to my pleasant surprise, many readers responded in enthusiasm on new habits they wanted to cultivate and joined me in the 21-days of change.

For my raw food diet, I told my mom that I’m just eating fruits and salads for the next 3 weeks, and she began to stock up the house with fruits like bananas, grapes and strawberries. In fact, I just finished a box of strawberries from typing this post. Yesterday, I went to watch How To Train A Dragon with my friend, and filled him in on my raw food diet. He then kept a look out for the restaurants we could dine in for that night. In the end I had warm baby spinach salad for dinner. My first time having it – can’t say I like it, but it’s nice for a change :D.

Don’t feel that you’re alone in your habit change because you aren’t. There are always people around you who are more than willing to support you.

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5 Shockingly Simple Habits of Successful People

Source: marcvaneynde.com

Success leaves clues and there are a lot of clues to be found in the habits of successful people.

Have you ever wondered why some people seem to have it all – success, happiness, money, love – and other people seem to lean into the struggle every single day?
It’s not just luck. There are 5 shockingly simple tactics used by successful people that you can apply to your own life and business.

Habits of Successful People

The 5 habits of successful people that I believe are fundamental to achieving success in life are shockingly simple. I don’t believe in reinventing the wheel so I look at what other successful people are doing for inspiration in my own life. I’ve seen these 5 habits repeatedly when observing successful people. The best part is, these 5 habits are free. Meaning you can borrow them and make them part of your daily practice right away if you so choose.

Habit #1 – Successful People Set Goals

They don’t just accept whatever is headed their way – they actively set and pursue specific goals. They have decided where they want to go in life and they align their actions with their goals in order to get there. Goals are constantly being set in all areas of their life – both personally and professionally. And, most importantly, they keep track of the progress they make toward achieving those goals. Their goals fuel their progress in life and help them to attract the success that they have.

Habit #2 – An Attitude of Gratitude

I write in a gratitude journal every single morning, but I didn’t always. Implementing this habit has changed my life!
I go looking for the good that has taken place in my life the day before. It’s one of the things that I do every single morning to start my day. Others fall asleep at night, ending their day in gratitude. Some people like to write before they go to bed, while others spend a few minutes thinking about things they’re grateful for before they fall asleep.
It doesn’t matter what your practice is – what matters is where you put your attention. If you put your attention on everything that went wrong during your day you’re going to get more of that. If you train your mind to look for the good in your day, you will attract more of that good – it will be far more visible to you because that is where you have put your attention.

Habit #3 – Celebrate Your Victories

Successful people are confident people and they don’t have any shame about saying, “I did this! I accomplished this! I achieved this!” They celebrate their wins every single day. They give themselves credit for the good stuff that they do in the world. Stop paying so much attention to your shortfalls and start looking at all the things that you do well in the world and you’ll be amazed at the difference it makes.
Sheryl Sandberg, author and Facebook COO, wrote a post leading into the New Year, which talked about a habit that she put in place after her husband passed away. On the advise of a friend, every night, she would write down 3 things that she did well in her journal. Not 3 things she was grateful for, or 3 thing that others did well, but 3 things that she did well each and every day. She attributes that practice to getting her through a very difficult time in her life. Some days the things she did well were as simple as, “Made a cup of tea.”
We all have at least 3 things that we did well every single day – some days those 3 things might bigger or smaller than other days, but they’ll still exist. Some days managing to answer your email might be one of the things you do well, other days it will be closing a big sale, or confidentially speaking to a huge audience – or maybe it will be taking the time to breath deeply and tell the people around you how important they are in your life. Learn to embrace the things that you are good at. It will build your self-confidence, your self-esteem and make you feel a lot better about yourself.

Habit #4 – Read, A Lot

A common theme among successful people is that they read – a lot. They read books, they read blogs, they read articles, and they read magazines.
Reading doesn’t have to cost money, you can get books for free at the library. You can read blogs and magazine articles online for free. If you type the name of a book and the word PDF into Google you’d be amazed at how many authors have made free copies of their books available on the Internet.
Make reading a practice every single day.
When you read you’re learning more things. The more you know the more capable you become and the more confident you become handling the day-to-day things that happen in life. Reading puts more tools in your toolbox and putting that information to work for you can make you more successful.

Habit #5 – Get Moving

The last thing that successful people do is, they exercise. They get out and they move their body. That doesn’t mean a fancy gym membership or a personal trainer. You can just get out and walk, that’s what I do. I try to walk for 30 minutes every single day and it makes a huge difference to how I feel. The amount of energy that I have and how my day gets started off is wonderful. When I exercise at the beginning of the day I set the tone for my achievements for the rest of my day because I’m accomplishing my personal goals to get moving every single day and to pay attention to my health. Can’t find a 30-minute block of time to walk every day? Split it up into three 10-minute power walks.
These are 5 simple habits of successful people that you can choose to apply to your own life – set goals, be grateful, pay attention to your wins, read more, and exercise more. These 5 things can be done by you starting today if you’d like to change your life by incorporating more happiness and more success. I encourage you to try these habits of successful people in your own life for the next 90 days.

Habit formation is not easy but the only way to do it is to simply start.

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CHANGE HABITS: Breaking Bad Behaviours

Love this, a really simple animated explanation of Habits

Busting the 21 days habit formation myth

Source: thelogicaloptimist.com

 Have you ever made a New Year’s resolution?

If so, you may have been assured – usually by a well-meaning supporter of your attempted transformation – that you only have to stick with your resolution for 21 days for it to become an ingrained habit. The magic number 21 creeps up in many articles about forming a new habit or making a change, but little is known about the origins of the ’21 days’ claim.

Psychologists from our department have devoted extensive time and effort to find out what it takes to form ‘habits’ (which psychologists define as learned actions that are triggered automatically when we encounter the situation in which we’ve repeatedly done those actions).

We know that habits are formed through a process called ‘context-dependent repetition’.  For example, imagine that, each time you get home each evening, you eat a snack. When you first eat the snack upon getting home, a mental link is formed between the context (getting home) and your response to that context (eating a snack). Each time you subsequently snack in response to getting home, this link strengthens, to the point that getting home comes to prompt you to eat a snack automatically, without giving it much prior thought; a habit has formed.

Habits are mentally efficient: the automation of frequent behaviours allows us to conserve the mental resources that we would otherwise use to monitor and control these behaviours, and deploy them on more difficult or novel tasks. Habits are likely to persist over time; because they are automatic and so do not rely on conscious thought, memory or willpower.  This is why there is growing interest, both within and outside of psychology, in the role of ‘habits’ in sustaining our good behaviours.
So where does the magic ’21 days’ figure come from?

We think we have tracked down the source. In the preface to his 1960 book ‘Psycho-cybernetics’, Dr Maxwell Maltz, a plastic surgeon turned psychologist wrote:

‘It usually requires a minimum of about 21 days to effect any perceptible change in a mental image. Following plastic surgery it takes about 21 days for the average patient to get used to his new face. When an arm or leg is amputated the “phantom limb” persists for about 21 days. People must live in a new house for about three weeks before it begins to “seem like home”. These, and many other commonly observed phenomena tend to show that it requires a minimum of about 21 days for an old mental image to dissolve and a new one to jell.’ (pp xiii-xiv)

How anecdotal evidence from plastic surgery patients came to be generalised so broadly is unclear.  One possibility is that the distinction between the term habituation (which refers to ‘getting used’ to something) and habit formation (which refers to the formation of a response elicited automatically by an associated situation) was lost in translation somewhere along the line. Alternatively, Maltz stated elsewhere that:

‘Our self-image and our habits tend to go together. Change one and you will automatically change the other.’ (p108)

Perhaps readers reasoned that, if self-image takes 21 days to change, and self-image changes necessarily lead to changes in habits, then habit formation must take 21 days. Although ‘21 days’ may perhaps apply to adjustment to plastic surgery, it is unfounded as a basis for habit formation. So, if not 21 days, then, how long does it really take to form a habit?

Researchers from our department have done a more rigorous and valid study of habit formation (Lally, van Jaarsveld, Potts, & Wardle, 2010). Participants performed a self-chosen health-promoting dietary or activity behaviour (e.g. drinking a glass of water) in response to a once-daily cue (e.g. after breakfast), and gave daily self-reports of how automatic (i.e. habitual) the behaviour felt. Participants were tracked for 84 days. Automaticity typically developed indistinct pattern: initial repetitions of the behaviour led to quite large increases in automaticity, but these increases then reduced in size the more often the behaviour was repeated, until automaticity plateaued. Assumed that the point, at which automaticity is highest, is also the point when the habit has formed, it took, on average, 66 days for the habit to form. (To clarify: that’s March 6^th for anyone attempting a New Year’s resolution.)

Interestingly, however, there were quite large differences between individuals in how quickly automaticity reached its peak, although everyone repeated their chosen behaviour daily: for one person it took just 18 days, and another did not get there in the 84 days, but was forecast to do so after as long as 254 days.

There was also variation in how strong the habit became: for some people habit strength peaked below the halfway point of the 42-point strength scale and for others it peaked at the very top. It may be that some behaviours are more suited to habit formation – habit strength for simple behaviours (such as drinking a glass of water) peaked quicker than for more complex behaviours (e.g. doing 50 sit-ups) – or that people differ in how quickly they can form habits, and how strong those habits can become.

The bottom line is: stay strong. 21 days is a myth; habit formation typically takes longer than that. The best estimate is 66 days, but it’s unwise to attempt to assign a number to this process. The duration of habit formation is likely to differ depending on who you are and what you are trying to do. As long as you continue doing your new healthy behaviour consistently in a given situation, a habit will form. But you will probably have to persevere beyond January 21^st.

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The Limits We Set Become The Prison We Live In

There is nothing worse that achieving goals that are too small and don't allow you to grow. Strive for those big goals and even if you miss them you've still have taken huge leaps forwards!

10 Morning Habits Successful People Swear By

Up and at ‘em! Morning people are successful people. Just ask any CEO, politician, professional athlete or inventor out there – they all start their day at the crack of dawn, gaining a leg up on the competition. Create a routine and stick with it. Studies prove that willpower is the strongest in the morning before exhaustion and other priorities get in your way. Adopt a morning ritual and you will start to see BIG results. So hold off hitting that snooze button and read up on some tips to guarantee a more productive future!

1. Get Up An Hour Early:

There is a 25^th hour in the day. You’ve just been sleeping through it. Getting up an hour earlier is going to take time to adjust to, but once you make it a habit, you will never look back. Research has shown, not only are early risers more optimistic and conscientious, they also anticipate problems and minimize them more efficiently.  Which of course is crucial to success in the business world.

2. Visualize!

Early hours foster reflection. Enjoy the quiet and take some time to map out your day. Think through your goals and to-dos. Take whatever notes you need to ensure your day will be calmer and more efficient. Research has shown that even two minutes of visualization and positive thinking can improve your mood and clarity for the entire day ahead.

3. Eat Breakfast:

Time is a luxury, enjoy it and feed yourself a wholesome breakfast. Sit down with your family and enjoy a hearty bowl of oatmeal. Fuel your body for the tasks that lay ahead of you. It will help you maintain a steady focus throughout the day.

4. Say Buh-Bye To THAT One Big Task:

Reprioritize your to-do list, placing the most dreaded task at the top of your list. Instead of letting it loom over you all day save yourself the agony and stress and get it done first thing. You will feel a sense of relief and be more ready and willing to tackle any trivial task that follows. Besides, the morning is the time when you typically have the most energy and feel the most rested. Sounds like a win-win to me!

5. Motivational Mantra:

Step One – Dig deep and find out what inspires you. Step Two – Create a mantra. Step Three – Repeat that same saying to yourself every morning. Step Four – Breathe and relax. You will feel more motivated and focused than ever before.

6. Get Moving:

Morning workouts not only give you a boost of energy, they pump you up, ensuring your senses are up and running. You’ll feel ready to tackle any problem that comes your way. Studies have shown that people are less likely to come up with excuses early in the morning. So with fewer interruptions, you now have no excuse not to set your alarm 15 minutes early and sneak in a quick jog or a 5 minute workout. There’s even an app, Hot5 Fitness, that features easy and effective full body workouts.

7. Pack Snacks!

Eating fuels your brain, improving focus, productivity and memory. Plan your snacks ahead of time and drop some bars into your bag. I opt for a protein-filled KIND Bar which is completely natural and prevents my blood sugar from dropping.  Smart snacking is critical for keeping your metabolism going and your brain working at full capacity through your busy day.

8. Toss It!

Learn to let go of the things that are cluttering your life. It’s one thing to try to clear your mind, but sometimes you have to physically toss something to feel lighter. So get rid of something – old magazines, junk mail, apps on your phone, old receipts or papers and watch how your attitude changes throughout the day. Our lives get cluttered so easily, but they can become uncluttered just as fast. Remember that.

9. Go To Bed Early:

If you want to watch one more episode on Netflix think again.  Getting the proper amount of sleep is critical to not only your mental health and creativity but to weight control. When your biorhythms are off it wreaks havoc on your entire system. Getting the proper sleep your body needs sets you up for success in everything else you want to achieve. So rest up, you have much to accomplish tomorrow!

10. Silence:

Waking up early offers you opportunities that few get to enjoy – watch the sun rise, hear the sound of birds chirping, and just be still. We are always on the move. Sit and enjoy the morning calm. It’s a brief time where you can be alone with your thoughts. Just breathe.

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