Yesterday Evening

I have often noticed how much the things I pay attention to before going to bed at night affect what I do when I get up in the morning. In fact it could almost be said that what sort of day I am going to have today was decided yesterday evening - and I don’t just mean when one wakes up with a hang-over!

Here are some of the things you can do in the late evening to increase your chances of having a productive day tomorrow.

• Look back over the list of what you did today. Is it the way you would have liked it to be? If not, what would have made it better?
• Ask yourself what do I want to have done by this time tomorrow?
• If you don’t have a fixed time for getting out of bed in the morning, decide what time you are going to get up
• Think through any special circumstances (meetings, visits, etc) you have, especially early in the day.
• Run through in your mind what you are going to do first thing.

Comments

[Michael B.]

I ask myself four questions every evening:

1. What went well today?
2. What were the magic moments?
3. What didn't go well?
4. What am I going to do about it?

[michael]

I've noticed this experience in myself; I even labelled it as "The Hemingway Bridge" after the writer Ernest Hemingway. Apparently he used to make sure he knew what he would write the next day before stopping for the day.

I suppose it's a form of auto-suggestion.

[Mark Forster]

michael:

<< I suppose it's a form of auto-suggestion. >>

Partially, I guess. But I think there's also an element of what the French call mise-en-place. That is getting everything set up and ready for what you are going to be doing.

[Steven]

Robert Fritz, author, business consultant and professional artist and creator addresses the "get everything set up and ready" in this fashion. Successful creators have mastered creating tension in their process that resolves in the direction of what they want to create. One way of doing that is to always have a place to go, or a next step. So I see this night before process as a way to go to sleep knowing what the "next step" will be when I wake up. Or at least the direction to head which will lead to figuring out the next step.

I often spend a large part of my mornings trying to figure out what to do for the day, and then let myself get distracted on the little low value items. I'm going to work with this idea and see how I can better set myself up for the next day when I go to bed.

[Mark Forster]

Steven:

Sometimes it's as simple as telling yourself that you will get up immediately your alarm goes off in the morning and that you won't use the snooze button.