Why You Need to Build a Daily Routine to Succeed

High-achieving athletes who take the podium are often the ones who have regimented schedules and the grit to stick to them. Sure, naturally talented athletes exist and sometimes even overlap with these star performers, but more often than not, it’s the ones that exercise discipline and commitment who bring home the gold.

What works is they’ve carved out daily routines they committed to each and every day. Instead of just relying on raw talent, they better themselves through rigorous training and dedication to their craft. They don’t just enter competitions without any prior preparation, they make sure they’re in tip-top shape through intensive practice.

This goes for business owners, as well. While you may have the natural talent, willpower, and vision for your business, carrying things out without any form of discipline or structure can spell disaster for you and your company.

Trying to accomplish tasks without any consistency can jeopardise your entire operation. Business growth and success require determination, dedication, and discipline, just like an athlete. It all boils down to a solid daily routine and schedule.

When you’re dedicated to your business goals and you know the steps you need to take to achieve them, putting in the right routine increases the chances of success because you’ve laid the foundation for how you’re going to run your business in an organised, targeted way. When you know your worth, you are more likely to be dedicated to your business goals and to put in the right routine to achieve them.

What is a routine and how does it help a business owner?

A routine is a fixed set of steps that you follow every day with the same or similar tasks in order to form good habits.

Now before you decide how impossible or boring that must be, wait a sec, you don’t have to do the same thing over and over every day – this isn’t a groundhog moment. Instead, you structure each day within each week with actions that will move you towards your goals. In most cases, you have to add in flexibility or you’d never be motivated to get up and go through with it.

Your routine isn’t a ball and chain you are tied to. It should be designed to be rewarding and provide mental health benefits as well as help you achieve your goals.

If I go back to the athletic analogy, an athlete doesn’t get up every day and go for a 20-kilometre run, that isn’t going to provide what they need. Instead, they would balance their schedule to exercise in different ways, have rest days, different eating plans and throw in some massages, stretches, and ice baths. When you approach your routine with variety and tackle activities to build multiple skills your good habits will come on fast and strong because you don’t just see results, it will feel good to do.

Developing habits can happen both consciously and unconsciously, it’s up to us to recognise our current routines and what isn’t working and put effort into creating the ones we want. 

Creating a conscious routine filled with good habits can help you find your passion again and motivate you in accomplishing to-do lists that will help you achieve your goals. So, if you want to lose weight, then make a habit of working out, eating well and getting plenty of sleep. You’ll find that it becomes second nature to put on your running shoes in the morning and go for your jog instead of having to convince yourself to roll out of bed and get moving.

Once you set positive routines in one aspect of your life you’ll find it easier to apply new routines in other areas, like your business, because your mindset is already wired for it and seeing the positives. Something as simple as a working exercise routine can motivate you to get off your ass and make it happen in business. There’s a lightbulb moment (unconscious or not) that suddenly goes, “Oh I have to do the work to make it happen, ok, let’s go”. Without this you’ll be stuck in the wishful mindset of “tomorrow will magically be better”.

Because you become accustomed to thinking a certain way, putting yourself in control of your actions and outcomes and finding every day wins you gain mental empowerment, trust your instinct and decision-making skills, become more independent and more open to the riskier choices that will allow you to move into a growth environment rather than staying stagnant or sliding backwards.

These are some examples of positive healthy habits that productive leaders see when they take charge of their routine and map their day:

1. Self-development
2. Ability to overcome negative emotions
3. Not take circumstances personally
4. Take responsibility for situations that occur
5. Trust others to complete their work to a high level
6. Self-care including healthy sleep, diet and exercise
7. Take breaks and holidays from work knowing that the business will operate well while you are on leave
8. Be okay about leaving the comfort zone and entering the growth zone.

Positive habits work in an upward spiral where becoming healthier, more energetic, and mentally stronger reinforced the positive attitude and outlook that will open up a gateway to consistency and bring you closer to your goals.

Five things you need to set your daily routine

Setting your daily routine and creating good habits will take a bigger push at first because you’ll need to put in extra effort to overcome unhealthy habits that have set in. As you gain momentum and feel better about what you can achieve and your personal ability, your healthy habits will begin to gain traction and be evident in other areas of your life.

Here are five things you need to lay down to get your positive daily routine off the ground and soaring high:

1. Commitment

Your commitment ensures that you have your eyes on the prize and can focus on the long-term goal. If you can’t find commitment it’s possibly because your goal or aspiration is not in alignment with your values or overall business purpose. You’ll need to revisit what you really want and set goals you actually care about.

Showing commitment and sticking to your word is great for strengthening your leadership ability and setting a solid example for your staff. When your team sees you stretching your ability and applying your best effort, they will be motivated to excel and provide their best for your company too.

2. Structure

Being able to segment your day into different task zones changes everything – no really, this is the best thing you can do to improve your business efficiency.

Instead of multitasking and having dozens of tabs open on your computer to simultaneously answer emails, check on your processes and communicate with your team, break your day into a regimented schedule where you focus on one task at a time. You need to be disciplined to avoid checking your inbox and replying to texts and emails outside of allocated time zones (especially when you are not at work).

This set structure gives you a sense of control over your day because you’re familiar with the tasks at hand and how you’re going to address them.

Set structure applies to every aspect of your workday. Set work zones for:

• Emails
• Meetings
• Calls
• Rest
• Lunch breaks
• Exercise (which might just be standing up from your desk)
• Staff mingling

This will also help you avoid wasting time on tasks that don’t need your immediate attention and  getting overwhelmed by how much you have to do.

You may be committed to correcting your habits, but if your schedule is all over the place, you won’t be able to develop a daily routine.

Allow padding between appointments to rest and recuperate instead of frantically going from meeting to meeting without pause. Create a to-do list to make it easier to separate urgent and low-priority tasks so you can work by priority and relieve some of that stress.

3. Consistency

Consistency is what cements routine. When you have a consistent pace and method in place it becomes easy to measure your progress and set a standard for your work output and achievements.

Bumping a task on today’s list to tomorrow is going to throw the routine out of whack, but another negative is that it gives your mindset the idea that skipping out of work is possible if you have a good excuse – what follows is more and more excuses. It will become easier to deviate from your routine and the good habits you’ve cultivated.

Consistency helps to generate better results because you get used to working at a specific pace while producing a desired quality. 

Before you opt to push back or scrap something from your to-list, really consider what other options you have available and stretch your creative thinking to find a solution you can put in place to get that task over the line today.

For example, you might find a way to assign a task, part of a task to a team member or partner, or enlist the help of a business coach to make sure your goals and expectations of what you can achieve and what you take on are healthy and achievable.

4. Discipline

While commitment is an internal driver based on your personal motivation and values, discipline is the opposite, it’s your external drivers that push you to focus on numbers, figures and stats to get better results for your business. Both are important and will complement each other.

Your discipline provides a set of rules to follow to better yourself and to deliver action, instead of just ideas or wishes that don’t have any power behind them to become real.

Discipline ensures that you hold yourself accountable for the tasks you’ve lined up. With time and through exercising your discipline it will be easier to ignore distractions. If we go back to my athletes example, a disciplined athlete will be able to put muscle pain and fatigue aside long enough to cross the finish line while an undisciplined one will give in to difficulty and quit.

5. Mindset

Having the right mindset brings a routine to life. You need a can-do attitude in order to set a routine that leads to success. Your energy and mindset are more powerful than you think and they directly affect your chances of success.

If you have no willingness to change a negative mindset, you might as well throw in the towel right now because if you have no belief in the process or the goals you have set, you’re not going to give it all you have to make it work (and probably deep down you don’t want to).

A positive mindset is the driving inspiration for success.

Being positive about your business actions and personal ability helps you flesh out your goals and take the everyday steps needed to reach the next level of growth and success.

A daily routine can provide a reliable and steady way to carry out your tasks that won’t have you scrambling for the next call or meeting. You’ll be calm, organised, and show your staff that you’re dedicated (and in turn, they’ll show their own dedication and productivity). The best part is that you’ll have more time off work because the energy you put in while you are there counts towards bigger gains. Wave goodbye to stress, overworking and burnout and say hello to holidays, weekends and time living the lifestyle you actually wanted when you first started your business.

If you are struggling to claw free from your bad habits and create a structure for your business, get in touch with us. We can analyse the real heart of the problem and help you brainstorm ways to turn it around quickly and easily.