My Daily Routine Example For Success

I recently wrote a post about how to create a daily routine that outlines how I think you can begin to build a daily routine to meet your goals. The idea in that post is to structure your day in hourly (or even half-hourly chunks) so you can get a clear overview of how you spend your time right now and how you could structure your daily routine in the future to better meet your goals.

However, I thought it would be useful to outline my typical daily routine in a separate post to give an example of my own daily routine and how it is designed to better meet my own personal goals.

And that’s the key…

Your own idea of a successful routine will be specific to you. Your daily routine will be different to a soccer player trying to be in the best athletic performance of their life so they can help their team win the Champions League.

Everyone’s vision of success is different. My own definition of being successful is keeping a healthy mind and body as I age.

Perhaps your main goal is to get better at coding or blogging, running farther or public speaking.

And so, I think a daily routine for success depends on what you want. If you go and copy the daily routine of someone you deem to be successful, you probably won’t get the same result as them because your own situation is unique and what you deem to be valuable is unique to you.

Creating a realistic daily routine for success

A good routine is one you can stick to.

Most people don’t have hours upon hours to dump into habits that will lead them to success. Most people have day jobs, children, and all kinds of responsibilities that need to be taken care of. These are the essentials that need to be taken care of first.

But even with the many responsibilities that you may have, I think there is still a good chunk of the day that you can dedicate to the habits that will help to get you to where you want to be in the long run.

But you have to be realistic. You have to think about the most realistic times for each of your daily activities.

Still, in my experience, you can make decent progress with whatever it is you’re trying to achieve if you do some, even a little on a regular basis but you have to be intentional, disciplined and consistent.

That’s what creating better habits is all about.

I’m not perfect, not in the slightest but I’m trying to do a bit when I can and do those bits over and over and over again.

So with that said, here are my daily routine examples that might help you to find some inspiration in whatever you’re trying to achieve.

But first, I’ll go over what my main goals are and then how I build those things into my daily routine.

My daily routine goals

So how does this all come together? My goals are quite simple and most I think are quite common. I want to keep a healthy, functioning body, eat foods that support that idea as well as move my body. Each day will have a slightly different exercise depending on what part of my body I train.

I want to keep a healthy perspective on life at the same time. That means practising the virtues I want to live by trying to be kinder, concentrating on the things I can control and not getting so wrapped up in everything else.

I want to keep learning and improving each day and that to me means listening to something or reading something to get new ideas and new perspectives and not giving time to the cycle of chaotic news that comes and goes.

I want to concentrate on what matters to me. This helps me to stay consistent. Everything else is just noise that blows in the wind.

My attention is valuable to me. I do not want to be pulled from post to post by things that simply do not matter.

My morning routine examples

My typical morning routine means waking up early, early enough to set myself up for the day without rushing. I don’t enjoy the stress of rushing around before I head on out so it is important to me to be consistent with this.

• Wake up at 6.30 am, no hitting the snooze button.

If I hit the snooze button, I start the day by giving myself some lame excuse like I didn’t get enough sleep, even when I probably did. The moment I turn off my alarm, rub my eyes and stand up, I remind myself I am in control and ready to take on the day on my terms.

• Water

I drink a glass of water, helping to wake my body up and get my metabolism going. The first glass of water in the morning kicks off my daily goal of drinking enough water even before I get dressed.

• Coffee and stretching

One thing that has helped me to keep stretching is habit stacking. Because I pour out a coffee in the morning anyway, it’s a great time to do my stretching whilst my drink cools down. Five minutes is all it takes to get this done.

Stretching has become important to me because as someone who sits a lot, I notice the difference when I don’t stretch. I do my five minutes of leg stretches and instantly feel the blood rush around my body, helping me to feel energised. Before I sit in my chair all day, I know I’ve done something to keep myself loose and have contributed to my athletic performance when I play sports.

• Exercise

Depending on what day it is, exercise is next in line. This means using the barbell or doing some push-ups, even if it’s 50 or so reps. Over the week, this really adds up. I don’t go to the gym because it is not my goal to get much bigger. My goal is to maintain my frame and remain reasonably strong.

• Cook lunch

Every day I cook my own lunch consisting of lean proteins and vegetables and maybe a sprinkle of seeds. Cooking has become important to me. It means I don’t have to think about what I’m eating that day because I’ve already decided that morning. It’s also another way I’ve managed to lose weight and stay consistent with this.

My afternoon routine examples

My typical afternoon routine means drinking enough water, eating my healthy meal and trying to do something mindful.

• More water

During the afternoon I’ll pour out a large bottle of water that I will drink throughout the afternoon. This helps me to reach my daily goal of enough water intake.

• Eat my healthy lunch

I try to eat my healthy lunch mindfully. That means eating slowly and paying attention to the nutrition on my plate and showing gratitude towards the good stuff that I’m putting in my body.

• Stretch legs

When I sit at my desk during the afternoon, I try to stretch my legs out underneath it. I also make sure I get up and move around once in a while so I don’t get stiff. This is important to me because my sciatic nerve was beginning to get sore from not having enough movement during the afternoons.

• Do something nice or helpful

During the day I try and do something nice or helpful or compliment someone in my attempt to be kinder and more helpful to those around me.

My evening routine examples

Each evening is different with a bunch of different responsibilities depending on the day of the week. However, there are certain things I always try to do as part of my daily routine.

• Cook a healthy dinner

In the evening I’m back in the kitchen, cooking a healthy meal full of nutritional food. This is also important to me as it helps to build the healthy habit of cooking on a daily basis. I think the more you cook, the better you get at it and it becomes less of a chore once you know what you’re doing.

• More water

Whilst I’m cooking dinner, I’ll drink some more water.

• Listen to something interesting

Depending on what interests me at the time, I’ll throw on a podcast to listen to whilst I cook. This means two habits in one and is another way I stack habits during my daily routine.

• Write

Once dinner is done I’ll get to writing or designing something for my blog. This helps me to stay consistent. Even if I do just a little, it’s a productive day and means progress is being made.

• Bed by 9 pm

I have always been lucky enough to sleep well but I appreciate this isn’t the case for everyone. However, I think being in your bedroom at a decent time helps to get you into the midframe of bedtime even if you don’t go to sleep right away. I don’t go to sleep at 9 pm, more like 10 pm or 10.30 pm. As I get older I appreciate how different I feel when I don’t get a decent night’s sleep.

Creating a flexible daily routine

The above routine examples are my focus each and every day but because most people have different activities on different days including myself, it’s important to be flexible when you have to be or you’ll never stick to your daily routine.

If you have to go out one evening, you can still slot your activities from your daily routine around that if they are realistic to begin with. For example, if you have to take your child to gymnastics after work, take a bottle of water with you if you’re trying to hit your 4L-a-day target.

Likewise, you could cook your healthy dinner before you go out and keep it in the oven until you get in.

If you want to write or study for an hour each day, perhaps you could wake up an hour earlier to fit these kinds of activities into your daily routine if you know you’re going to be out later on a Wednesday evening.

In my own experience, being flexible to a degree allows you to be consistent. During a typical week, I will go to training on one evening, play in matches on another evening and get home slightly later than usual causing me to eat dinner at a later time, for example.

And my weekend looks very different to my weekdays. However, my daily routine activities remain the same and in line with my goals but they will usually be done slightly differently or at different times of the day due to more time flexibility.

In conclusion

The key thing I always think about is consistency. If I don’t do a particular activity one day for whatever reason, I’ll try and do it the following day or a day during the week that makes the most sense.

Trying to take on too much with whatever it is you’re working towards isn’t helpful. Instead, it’s far easier to build smaller habits into your daily routine. These will then add up over time.

The above daily routine examples all contribute towards my goal of being healthy physically and mentally as I age. So think about your own goals and then work back from there – think about the actions you’d need to take each day realistically to reach those goals.