If you don’t do habit this every day, you may be costing yourself a chunk of your potential. Or worse – the whole pie.
Which is a shame. Because this 5-minute habit is probably the quickest and easiest way you can make real sustainable change in your life.
Ask yourself: if you could complete double your workload in half the time, achieve all the goals you set for yourself, and actually have the freedom to spend time doing the things you love – just by doing this 5-minute ritual – would you do it?
I’m not talking about some secret green tea formula you found on Instagram, or a mystery stimulant sold without FDA approval. It’s even easier than that. And legal.
It’s the same superhuman strategy that Elon Musk uses to run his multi-billion dollar companies, and Benjamin Franklin used before discovering electricity.
*Hint: virtually everyone who has contributed something of value to the world uses this strategy to attain mental, physical, emotional, financial, and spiritual wellbeing.
All you need is a pencil & paper or Microsoft Excel. The rest is easy – put your head down for 5 minutes… and make a damn schedule. That’s it.
Making a schedule is easy and incredibly worthwhile, both for your career and wellbeing. Why wouldn’t you spend 5 minutes a day doing something that automatically gives you better odds of success?
If somehow you’re still not convinced, here are six more reasons why you need to be making a schedule every day.
1) To Create Your Ideal Day
The purpose of a schedule is to create the day you want to have. Or put better: to create the day you need to have.
Let’s assume you sleep for 8 hours a day, and work for 8 hours every weekday. Subtract an hour for each meal of the week, and another 30 minutes for daily hygiene.
(168 Hours/Week) – Sleep(8 x 7) – Work(8 x 5) – Food(3 x 7) – Hygiene(.5 x 7) = 47.5 Spare Hours/Week
You still have nearly 50 hours of free time every week. That’s more than enough time to start a side-business, develop your dream physique, or pick up those guitar lessons you promised yourself last month.
If you don’t create your future, you will be subject to the fate of your environment. Think of those 5-minute phone calls that last an hour, or bedtime Netflix sessions that run until morning…
Don’t get me wrong – making a schedule should not feel restrictive or limiting. You are at the liberty to allocate as much time you feel you need for monotonous activities.
But, a well-made schedule should account for unexpected circumstances and adapt naturally to your environment. It must prioritize your objectives before anything else, because that is where your growth lies.
If you don’t create your ideal day, you will never have it.
2) To Achieve Your Objectives
A goal without a schedule is like a road trip without a destination. Just driving endlessly without any clear indication of the progress you’ve made…
Every goal has a timeline. Using a schedule, you can break down your short and long-term goals into daily tasks. This simplifies your burden tenfold.
Say you want to learn Spanish in 6 months. Before you learn how to hold a conversation, you have to learn a single word. Then you go on to full sentences, followed by conjugation, to writing full paragraphs, and finally speaking ‘como un natural’.
Without a daily schedule of incremental challenge, what should take 6 months can take more than 2 years… But will more likely result in you giving up halfway through.
Just the simple act of tracking your daily progress with a schedule may save you years of time and energy in the long run.
3) Routine
A stable routine is one of the best predictors of mental health that we know of.
Routines are also known to improve your energy levels, focus, organizational skills, and temperament. They give you a sense of control.
Moreover, a lack of routine will attract unnecessary chaos into your life. The time you wake up, go to bed, eat your meals, and all the tasks in between will raise your anxiety if they are not done at consistent times.
But no matter how much you try and replicate each day, there are always events – both planned and unplanned – that will sway you from your routine. That’s why you need a schedule.
Your schedule is the best (and only) way to account for all of your daily drama. It accounts for the unaccountable, and expects the unexpected. Going into your day blind of your tasks is like going to war without strategy.
Once you develop a consistent routine, you can begin to play around with the variables and batch activities together. This will save you time, money, and heaps of energy that could be used more efficiently.
4) Increase Your Productivity
If you are given a month to complete an assignment, you will probably take the full month. But if you are given three days, you will find a way to get it done in three.
Motivation is a funny thing. It comes and goes like the tides of the ocean, and you’re just a surfer waiting for a wave. But when the wave comes, you have to act fast – or else you’re going to miss it.
The reason why a schedule is so beneficial for productivity is because it creates a sense of urgency. Yes, this does create some short-term stress. But it’s a far more attractive option than its counter – not achieving your goals and objectives.
When you operate an effective schedule, you will come to realize that you don’t have as much time as your fantasy mind tells you. What may be a 2-minute Facebook scroll can turn into the YouTube Rabbit hole if you are not careful.
Thankfully, there is a solution to this – procrastination rewards. Using your schedule, you can allocate 15-30 minute blocks of “procrastination” after completing dull work or activities.
By using procrastination as the reward, you are triggering your dopamine receptors to respond to your task at hand. This will increase your motivation, and in turn save you time.
5) Sets The Criteria For Failure
Here’s the thing: you’re going to fail hundreds of times whether you make a schedule or not. The only difference is that with a schedule, you will know when you fail.
Without a schedule, you can fail dozens of times without even realizing it. Until eventually, you hit rock bottom and cannot climb back up.
A schedule naturally tracks your daily progress, which is enough to stop failure in its tracks. When you are aware of your shortcomings, you can build off of them.
Don’t be fooled into the belief it’s all about positive thinking. If you desire success of any sort – financial, physical, mental, or spiritual – it’s important to develop a healthy relationship with failure.
Creating a schedule will help you recognize your mental and emotional blind spots.
Consider the Pareto Principle: 80% of your challenges in life come from 20% of your activities.
A schedule can help isolate such activities, so you can make the final decision whether to eradicate them completely or change their structure.
6) To Get Out Of Bed
If you have trouble getting out of bed in the morning, it may be due to a lack of clear goals.
Scheduling clear goals and objectives should literally excite you. That’s because there is a direct relationship between rewards and dopamine – that joyous feeling of thrill, excitement, and achievement.
But dopamine is more than a mere reward. Studies show that dopamine is connected more so to the pursuit of reward than the actual reward itself (1). The fun is in the chase.
By using your schedule as a dopamine trigger, you can literally regulate your motivation on a daily basis. Of course you will still have weary days, but they will occur much less often and to a diminished degree.