Evening Wins: Unpacking the Secrets of a Killer Night Routine!
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[00:00:00] Hello, welcome to the Productivity Genius Podcast. I'm your host, Kelly Fifield, and if you've been following along, you know I'm all about bringing you actionable steps to discover your own productivity genius. Today it's all about setting up your evening routine for an amazing morning Scott and I just moved Taylor into her dorm this weekend and Taylor reminded me something that actually applies to so many things, but your evening routine as well.
She said, you know, we have to be careful about where we put these things when we show up at the dorm because. We'll never move it or I'll never move it right? And so many things in our life are like that, right? Like have you ever moved into a new house and you're setting up the kitchen and you put different things in different cabinets, and then that's just the cabinet that those things live in for the rest of the time you're in that house.
The same is probably true for your evening routine, right?
There's probably things that you do each night that if we looked at it a little bit more closely, you could probably find a more efficient or more helpful thing to be doing.
Now, change is more [00:01:00] difficult in the short term, but it can save you tons of time and sanity and relaxation in the long term if we can just focus our attention on the change in order to make it the new normal.
So here's the thing, I'm not gonna be dictating your evening routine. I don't have the perfect formula for you, but fortunately you do.
you may not think of it as a routine, but I'd be willing to bet that you have a pretty strict routine. Maybe it changes a little here or there if different events are coming up on different nights of the week.
But likely, if you looked even at those nights, they'd probably have a routine too. So the first thing I'd suggest you do is just take 30 seconds and jot down your routine for your evening.
Now that actually brings up the second question that I'd love for you to answer for yourself. What counts as evening for you?
For me, it's the moment I hit like the off button on my work mode. Consider defining your evening as like the moment you decide work is over. If [00:02:00] you don't have a set time for that, I would encourage you to make that decision. Otherwise, you can run the risk of working all night long since I consider times when I'm thinking about work as my work hours too.
So I don't wanna be working 15 hours a day. So I decide when work ends and then I let work thoughts just go in the evening. Now this is easy for me now since I know everything for work is scheduled. So I just have to remind myself that everything that I wanna get done will get done when it shows up on my calendar.
I. But if you aren't there yet, you might wanna just keep some spot, maybe on your phone, some sort of device, or maybe a pad that you always have with you and capture work thoughts so that you know that they're all captured, and you can tell yourself, okay, everything that needs to get done is stored right here on my phone or on this pad, and I'll get to it tomorrow.
Now, personally, I don't define a separate like afternoon from my evening. I just kind of have like work and non-work hours. So [00:03:00] I just think of it as work and then evening.
I just say that when work ends, I'm moving into the evening portion of my day. And if that's not great for you, call it whatever makes sense for you. You don't wanna call it something that might be annoying or bring up negative emotion. You just wanna make sure that you do separate work time in your mind.
You wanna be able to turn that off.
The reason I like defining evening as early in the day as I can, so like as soon as work ends, is it gives me lots of hours to play with, to be present with my family, and also plenty of little moments to incorporate habits to set me up for a great tomorrow. It's actually one of my favorite ways to take care of myself and to be kind to myself.
My future self is always so grateful when I think of her in advance.
So let's answer some more questions to discover habits that you might want to incorporate into your evening routine, to be kind to yourself and to set yourself up for a great day. Let's look at those morning speed bumps. You know, those seemingly tiny things [00:04:00] that sometimes spiral your morning into chaos. Take 30 seconds to a minute to jot down anything that happens or comes up with some regularity that makes the mornings harder than they need to be. Then give yourself five to 10 minutes to brainstorm how to solve those problems.
The answers to all of these problems are in your brain just waiting for you to ask the question. What could you or your family do in the evening before to reduce or eliminate these problems?
I recently had two problems in the morning that would show up about half the time. One was picking out my clothes, deciding what to wear every morning was draining my brain power. I would sort through every item in my closet once. Go through a second time, then head to my drawers, see if there's anything in there that looks decent, and finally pick something that I was very unhappy with.
And it was just a terrible way to start the day. So the solution I created was starting doing it the night before, but [00:05:00] not right before bed because at that point my brain would act like a complete toddler and resist it so hard. I had to move that habit up right before my shower. The cue I used was taking off my Apple watch. This is a habit stack, so if you're trying to institute a new habit, it's much easier if you stack it onto an existing habit. So I always take off my Apple Watch every night, and as soon as I do that now I think, oh yeah, I have to pick out my clothes.
I usually have a lot more energy at that point in the evening, so it's much easier. My brain doesn't freak out. as a side note, to improve that this year I'm actually trying out a capsule wardrobe from this site. Classy Yet Trendy or trendy? At Classy. Classy yet trendy?
I think it is. So I'm hoping that makes the process even easier. The other problem was packing my lunch. Some mornings that was fine, and other mornings it would take me forever.
So I stacked that habit onto the end of dinner. So now I eat dinner, and right after I pack my lunch,
Eliminating those two things from my morning [00:06:00] was such a gift. Now, if you're like me, I get excited to try stuff like this, and then I have the tendency to bite off more than I can chew. So just notice this, pull and resist it, and decide to master one routine at a time. This is where the magic happens.
I wouldn't try a new evening routine, morning routine, start a new diet or something like that, all at the same time. Make the evening routine your only focus for a few weeks until it becomes the new normal. It's tempting to try to do a complete overhaul of all the habits, but success is much more likely if we focus on one thing at a time.
Now, when I hear people talk about self-care, I used to envision long bubble baths and massages and facials and treats. And I'm certainly not against any of that, But my favorite form of self-care is being really kind to myself, moment to moment, speaking to myself kindly, never beating myself up or putting myself down.
I did that for a long time, and there's absolutely. No upside to [00:07:00] that. So I purposely monitor and don't let myself be mean to myself anymore. But that's a side note. But one of the best tools you can use to be kind to yourself is habits and routines that make tomorrow easier.
As you're working to incorporate new routines, be sure to celebrate all the little wins. Ideally, reward yourself immediately. Positive feelings and rewards after completing a habit, reinforce it. And there's no shame in a sticker chart game. The same things that light up little kid brains work for adults too. I know it might sound ridiculous, but use a habit tracker, stickers, check marks, smiley faces, stars. They all totally work.
The human brain loves accumulating things like this. So use this biohack to create a reward system for yourself. So accumulate stars or happy faces or check marks. Totally works. Maybe get a pretty jar and some beautiful glass beads and drop one in each time you follow through. I know it sounds really stupid, [00:08:00] but it actually works.
Why not try it?
But even if you give yourself some amazing scratch and sniff stickers, like the ones that smell like gasoline, I know I'm not the only one who loves that smell right or some other super duper reward, you're going to mess up from time to time. Don't freak out. Don't make it a big deal. You're human. Just follow the mantra.
Never miss twice, and then get back at it next time. I hope this episode inspires you to create an evening routine that creates more relaxation and calm in your life. Have a beautiful week, my friend.
