The Progress Pod - Ep 9 - My Top 3 Habits to Implement Daily

In this episode of the Progress Pod, the speaker outlines three habits that can have a positive impact on various areas of life. The first habit is getting outside first thing in the morning, even if it's just for a few minutes. The second habit is maintaining a consistent sleep schedule, even for those who work shifts. The third habit is planning the day the night before, in order to prioritize tasks and be more productive. These habits have been found to improve energy levels, focus, and overall performance. The speaker encourages listeners to try these habits and share their experiences. Hello and welcome to episode number nine of the Progress Pod. So today is me myself and it's going to be a short sharp to the point episode that's going to outline my top three habits to have you feeling great and really pushing on with that progress. This is daily habits to implement and it's not going to be anything about how many grams of protein you should eat or how many steps you should get, how many calories, nothing like that. This is three habits that if we can implement daily is going to have a real positive and ripple effect in all other areas of our life allowing us to make progress not only with our health and fitness but in your career and absolutely everything that you're going to do. So I've tried a lot of different things, various different morning routines, various different evening routines. I've tried a lot and through my experience like I've realized it doesn't need to be complicated and there's so many things out there that we can end up just over complicating things and try to say right okay I've got I need to spend an hour doing this in the morning and if I don't do this then my day's going to be a disgrace and like there's so we can get over complicated and that's what we want to avoid. So I'm going to give you top three habits that's going to really help you with that. So firstly for me is getting outside first thing in the morning. Now this probably doesn't have as big an impact during the winter months when it's pitch black and it's really raining but especially from say March to September, October first thing that you do get outside. It doesn't need to be a walk. If you can go walk then even better but if you've got even two three minutes just to get outside into daylight regardless if it's raining or whatever get outside into daylight this is going to allow you to wake up in the best possible way. It's the shortest but most high-impact thing that I've implemented into my day for sure and what I tend to do is rather than go a walk just in case the kids wake up, I literally open the back door, walk out in my bare feet and just either walk around the garden for a bit, stand there, do a wee bit of stretching like in the daylight and honestly in terms of waking up that is better than coffee, anything at all. If you get outside first thing that's going to wake you up in the best possible way which again is then starting your day off well. So you don't need to meditate for three hours or anything like that. For me getting outside first thing is the best way to wake up and start the day. The next one for me is a consistent sleep schedule. So this isn't going to work for everybody because you're going to have people that work shifts and so on but even if you do work shifts have a sleep schedule for that particular shift. So if you work a day shift have a sleep schedule that you do when you're on day shifts. Have a sleep schedule that you try and stick to when you're on night shift. If you do that you're going to give yourself the best chance of waking up refreshed, full of energy. So let's just talk if you don't work shifts and you can have a consistent sleep schedule. Let's also ignore young children because that just throws spanners in the works and that's something I've been dealing with for the last four years now of children waking up and that's just something you can't control but what you can control is when you go to bed. So what we need to be doing is trying to identify a time where we go to bed each night and a time we wake up in the morning. If we can get that as consistent as possible within say a 30 minute region. So let's just say somewhere between you go to bed somewhere between 9.30 and 10 and you wake up somewhere between 5.30 and 6. Like if we can get in and around that range and as I said it doesn't need to be those times but if you can get a consistent sleep schedule where you go to sleep and wake up within a sort of half an hour period, that is going to really change the game in terms of how you wake up, how you feel, how you energise through the day, your focus, mindset, how you perform in the gym. Absolutely everything. Your decision-making, willpower. I can't express enough how important it is trying to get a consistent routine. A consistent routine is actually more important than the length of sleep. So if you're somebody that is really busy, whatever the case would be, you're not going to get seven or eight hours but you can get six hours. If you get that six hours consistent, so let's just say it was midnight to 6 a.m. every single day, you're going to feel more refreshed and better than somebody that gets eight hours sleep but it changes every day. Maybe they sleep from 10 till 6 one day then midnight till 8 the next day. Like that's not allowing the body to get into a consistent routine and it's disrupting the circadian rhythm. So if you can get into that consistent routine, it allows you to actually start naturally waking up. You'll notice if you stick to the routine consistently, you'll see the weekend, you may not need to be up at 6 but your body will start waking up at that time because that's the body clock and if you can do that, like it just makes waking up so much easier. You wake up feeling so much more refreshed. You're not waking up in the middle of a deep sleep. So many benefits to it. So if you can, get a consistent sleep schedule. So that's number one, get outside very first thing. Number two, consistent sleep schedule and the next one and the final one for me is planning your day the night before. So if you're sitting there on a Monday night, make sure we're planning out Tuesday in detail in terms of what you've got to do, when you're doing it, when are you working, what you're doing when you're at work, when are you going walks, when are you training, when are you making food, when are you chilling. Get this down on a paper. I literally write down sort of hour by hour basically. So on a Monday night, I'll sit down the last 10 minutes of the day before I finish up my work and stuff like that. I'll literally write out Tuesday from the moment I wake up 5 a.m. until I go to bed like 9, 10 p.m. So that I'll have my day outlined in detail basically in like hour blocks of what I'm doing. So I like to write it down. Some people put it into a calendar online, some people might write it in the notes on their phone, whatever works for you, but plan that day. If you wake up and you've not planned the day, you're not starting the day with any intention, the day's going to run away from you. You'll end up opening a phone, looking at an email, then that will distract you for this, then something else will come up and before you know it, the day's just been gone. You've not been intentional, you've not done a lot of things that you wanted to do, you're not prioritised. If you wake up and you just look and you see, right, this is my plan for the day, you just go through it ticking boxes, you're going to be so much more productive and you're going to get so much more done. Caveat to that is not every day is going to go exactly to how you planned it the night before. We know things come up in work, we know things come up with the kids, we know things don't always go to plan, some things take longer than we thought we would, like so many things could knock the plan out, but if you've got that plan there, it gives you that blueprint, something to follow and it's going to increase your productivity and output so much. So I think doing these three things, again it's not directly related, so getting outside first thing isn't directly related to your gym performance or weight loss or anything like that, but doing these three things in terms of getting outside for the very first thing you do before you look at the phone or anything like that, having a consistent sleep schedule and planning out your day in detail the night before. These three things for me are the biggest high-impact habits that I implement daily in order to, or I've seen yield the best results on all other areas in terms of your productivity and focus at work, your energy levels, your performance in the gym, everything like that. These are my top three habits. So again, everybody's probably going to have different, but I've tried everything under the sun in terms of different routines, as I said, and these are the top three for me in terms of habits I believe we should all implement into our day. Hopefully you have enjoyed this short and sweet episode, just some implements or actions that you can implement straight away. If you do, let me know how you find them. Also, if you've got any habits, any routines, anything that you feel has to be implemented, something that's really worked for you, let us know and we'll see. I'll give that a try if I haven't already, but for me, those three are the biggest high-impact habits that we can implement into our day. So hopefully you enjoyed this podcast. If you've listened to it, take a screenshot, share it on your stories, share it with a friend, and hopefully we can impact more people. But yeah, enjoy the podcast. Anybody wants me to cover any topics in particular, let me know, but let us know what you, or how you found this episode. If you've tried these things, how they work for you, and I look forward to catching up on the next episode.