3 Rituals to Increase Productivity

We have all heard about how our morning ritual impacts our productivity. A morning ritual gives us a pattern to start our day and sets us off in the right direction to conquer what we need to get done. Everyone should have a morning ritual to get their day off to a productive start. But what about the rest of the day?

The problem is that the benefits of the morning ritual wear off as we go through the day. We come up against unexpected obstacles, it takes us longer to complete a project, we wear our willpower, we face tasks we don’t want to do, well you get the idea.

After the morning burst is where we lose a lot of our time and productivity. Incorporating rituals into our day can help us stay on track and feel accomplished with what we achieved.

Here are 3 rituals to increase productivity –

Get Back to Work! – This is a small ritual to do get us back on track focusing on what we need to accomplish after a break, an interruption or a lack of focus. Now, while a Rip Van Winkle type of nap might be refreshing, this type of ritual is something that can be done in about 5 minutes but gives us the energy to get back to crossing things off our to-do list.

The Get Back to Work ritual might simply be reviewing your to-do list, it might be a few minutes breathing and shifting our mind from the previous task to the next task, or maybe it is cranking up the theme song from Rocky. Whatever you do for this ritual the goal is to help make the transition from before to what you are going to accomplish next.

I Did It! – We also know that having an end of the day, put all your pens in place, switch your calendar to the next day, clean up your desk, etc., ritual is a good way to end the day. Even better is to incorporate into the ritual an I Did It! component.

At the end of your day don’t just close up shop focusing on what still needs to get done. Take a moment to reflect on the big and small things you got done during the day. Maybe you finally finished that huge client project – celebrate it. Maybe you finally sent off a proposal – celebrate it! This type of end of day ritual shows that we made progress and keeps us from thinking that life is just a series of to-dos.

Bye-Bye Work – Maybe you have heard the story about the father who touches a tree each evening as he walks into the house. When his kids ask him about why he touches the tree he tells them that he is leaving all his work problems behind so he can focus on being there for his family. Leaving work behind and focusing on our personal life is a ritual we as business owners may not think we can do but it actually beneficial to our business.

Even as business owners we can’t be working all.the.time. We need to have more in life because it can help us relax, solve problems and decrease burnout. There should be a line between our home and work life. I personally set a timer for 15 minutes before I pick my kids up from school so that I can transfer my frame of mind from productivity coaching to being mom. Transferring our focus from work to home is imperative to making sure we get the best of both worlds.

A morning ritual is important to get our day off to a powerful start. But as go through our day we need other rituals to help us refocus from distractions so we have accomplishments to reflect on when we wrap up for the day. We need to break from our business life to personal to revitalize ourselves to be more productive.