I’ve always been intrigued by people that appear to get three times as much done in the same number of hours as everyone else. How do they achieve more in one day than most of us do in a week? And how do they do this whilst also appearing to be fit and healthy with a proper commitment to a full personal and family life?

80% of success is psychology (How you manage yourself and your state) – 20% is mechanics (The actions you take).

Below are some of the habits [that have been adopted by some] of the most successful people in the world:

Self discipline and control

• Rise early and at a consistent time each day – “Getting up early to tackle the top three things you want to accomplish in your day allows you to regain control of your life”
• Have a morning routine – this often includes exercise, mindfulness or meditation, positive affirmations, and eating a healthy breakfast. Allocating a specific time to answering emails before turning off notifications for the rest of the day is a popular routine. 
• Spend 15-20 mins per day on focused thinking and planning – This means no notifications, no disruptions and having a period of time to work on your business, not in your business. 
• Make exercise a priority – Running, swimming, ice baths, or a full workout – many people from Tony Robbins to Richard Branson credit exercise and starting the day with those healthy endorphins..

Definiteness of purpose – decisiveness

• Have clear goals, both personal and professional – If we have no clear goal, how do we know if we’ve reached a desired point in life? Personal goals are just as important as professional ones, if not more. In order to achieve a meaningful work-life balance we must have clear goals about what we want to achieve from the get go. 
• Be fully committed and focused on achieving set goals – Success requires discipline, hard work, perseverance, tenacity, will, courage, and faith. We won’t find many autobiographies written where the chosen path was smooth sailing. Instead, absolute focus and commitment are always treasured. 
• Be consistently making decisions to move themselves closer to their goals – This sounds obvious but those who prosper in the world make a mental note to consistently ask themselves this simple question – “Is this action today moving me closer to my goals?”. 

Time management

• Avoid multitasking – It’s proven in multiple studies that multitasking doesn’t work. Trying to constantly multitask produces changes in the brain that can cause depression, anxiety and actually decrease productivity. To be successful you need to focus on one task at a time fully. The notion that only multitaskers are achievers is a modern belief that often forces individuals to exert more than their brains can focus on. 
• Ban ‘friendly interruptions’ – It takes an average of 23 mins to get back in the zone. This means switching off notifications and only checking emails twice a day, for example. Answering alerts means you’re working according to other people’s timelines and not your own.  
• Find your own flow and best practices – if you’re more efficient early in the morning and build your day around that, you’re bound to get the most out of your core time. It’s been well documented that in some professional sports teams, coaches allowed players to train at times that worked best for them. The outcome? More energy and better performance. 
• Be organised, in your work, at home and in your personal life – It’s rare to see a highly successful person with a messy workspace, car, or home. Steve Jobs, Mark Zucherberg and many others are well known for their minimalist living, which includes a wardrobe of 7 of the same shirts, trousers, and shoes.
• Avoid time wasters and time zapping activities  – No scrolling through your phone or binging TV shows. Seek out pre-prepped meals, organize and sort out clothes to be ready for the entire week and outsource many time consuming tasks if feasible. 
• Get enough sleep – Jeff Bezos swears by 8 hours a day without fail and no alarm clock to start your day with a startle.
• Eliminate decision-making tasks – Studies show that we make between 10,000-40,000 decisions and that can lead to decision fatigue. Many successful people reduce this by turning small decisions into routines and making all big decisions in the morning first thing. Finally they remove some decisions altogether such as:
  • Having a wardrobe [consisting] of the same outfit (Richard Branson, Mark Zuckerberg, Barack Obama, Simon Cowell, Giorgio Armani) 
  • Having the weeks’ food prepared in advance

Investment in themselves

• Consistently learning – Reading, watching positive videos, communicating regularly with a mentor figure
• Networking – Spending time with people that inspire them
• Committing to relaxation and downtime – Meditation and mindfulness, having zero-tech time
• Preventing emotions from building up – Meditating, journalling, life-coaching

Here are some of the changes I’ve made in the last year to optimize my own time:

1. I get up every morning at 6:30 am and:-

• Walk my dog
• Make a healthy smoothie
• Exercise
• Review my day (Which i planned in advance last night) 

I work better in the morning so I tend to start early, take a longer break midday then experience a burst of energy again in the early evening. 

2. I took time to set out my personal goals for the next quarter to obtain a desired work-life balance. These include working on my fitness goals, healthy eating, as well as some challenges I wish to see completed.

3. I started using the pomodoro technique – working in short bursts of 25-45 minutes which increased my efficiency ten-folds. I also blocked out personal time in my diary before work commitments to ensure that I’m getting the right balance. This keeps me happier, more positive,  and ultimately in a better place to work. 

4. I set up an accountability group at my shared workspace and committed to some regular networking events. I’m also reading books about some of the people that have had success in my areas of interest.  

5. I have invested in a personal trainer, signed up for some challenges that I can do on my peloton, and made a conscious decision to commit 1 hour every day to new learnings – from reading to watching ted talks, etc. 

To summarise, most people have habits – some are positive, some are not. Successful people tend to have more of the types of habits that contribute to their success. However, great news is that cultivating positive habits takes no more effort than developing bad ones.

“If you want to live a happy life, tie it to a goal, not to people or things.”

Albert Einstein