Below are 8 daily habits every entrepreneur needs to succeed, no matter where you work.
Whether you work from home, or you business has it’s own office space, there are daily habits every entrepreneur needs to succeed.
If you work from home, you know the #struggleisreal to get motivated every day, remember to take care of yourself, and be intentional with your time. It can be really difficult to get into a routine when your commute is across the hall from your bedroom, and it can also be equally difficult to turn off “work mode”.
If you don’t work from home, it can be just as difficult to move forward in your business while keeping some sort of balance in your life.
So without further ado, 8 simple daily habits every entrepreneur needs to succeed, no matter where you work.
1. Read your goals out loud every day.
It’s hard to stay motivated to work when you don’t know what you’re working towards. I’m a super goal and list oriented person. Every month my business coaches make my write down my goals for the month (and sometimes I forgot to write them in my google account, but I swear I still write them!). I then take it a few steps further and put my goals on a piece of paper and tape it to my bathroom mirror so I see them and can read them outloud every day. It’s so important to actually read them OUT LOUD. Something about it just makes you way more accountable to them. I mean seriously, if you told yourself to do the same thing for 30 days straight you’d probably do it, right?
I also write them down in my alarm app, Kiwake. In order for the alarm to not blare off again, I have to literally get out of my bed, take a picture of a pre-selected object in another room, read my goals aloud and play a mind game to wake up my brain. Only then will my alarm stop going off.
2. Eat an energizing breakfast.
I used to skip breakfast allllll the time and I’d literally just shuffle across the hall from my bedroom to my office and get to work in my inbox. YUCK. By 10AM I’d be hungry, cranky, tired, the list goes on. And worst of all? I’d be unproductive, distracted and sluggish with my work. Now, the first thing I do after waking up is go downstairs and make breakfast. My go-to recipes for a great productive morning are:
- Scrambled eggs with spinach, feta and Kalamata olives
- Scrambled eggs with salsa verde
- A shake with coffee, greek yogurt, creamer, a banana, peanut butter and cacao nibs (I imagine this is like being on speed, but in a good way ahha! Put it this way, I wrote a 35 page single spaced script for a class I was teaching in one morning after drinking this shake.)
- Greek yogurt for the on-the-go mornings.
3. Move.
This is something we really need to be intentional about as entrepreneurs. It’s SO EASY to sit at our desk all day and not move. It’s so difficult to pull away when there are things to be done, and it’s exceptionally difficult when our view of exercise or working out is a time suck instead of a productivity booster. But, seriously, have you heard of sitting disease? They say with the rise in computers and mobile devices, we’re moving less than ever before and this has caused a significant rise in health issues such as:
- Diabetes
- Heart Disease
- Reduced Blood Flow
- Obesity
- High Blood Pressure
- Reduced Metabolism
- Disuse atrophy of muscles
So consider this your warning and your public service announcement to actually get up and move every single day! Even just for 5 minutes at a time.
4. Personal Development.
It’s hard being an entrepreneur. I get that. The second we label ourselves as a small business owner it seems like our needs go to the very bottom of the list, because “there are paying clients who need things done! They’re more important!” Yes- they’re super important! They’re the reason you have a business in the first place. But what I’ve found is that it’s nearly impossible to continue pouring into your clients and your audience if you don’t pour into yourself first. You can’t fill others up if you’re pouring from an empty cup, so take time each day or each week for personal development.
I made a list of 50 things I can do for 30 minutes (give or take) to get out of the office every day. Amongst them is reading, going to the gym, creating art for fun, sitting without a device to just think. Take time daily to pour into yourself.
5. Gratitude.
This one is simple! Every day, write down or say out loud at least 3 things your grateful for. It makes you a happier person. I promise. I try not to repeat the same thing two days in a row but you can absolutely say the same things over and over. It will make you so much more appreciative of your success of being your own boss.
6. Eliminate or Manage Distractions During Work Time.
UGH. Seriously, there’s a LOT of noise in the world these days. At any given time you can be contacted by email, texting, voice texting, a phone call, facebook messenger, a facebook comment, facebook stories, instagram stories, instagram comments, snapchat, (you get the point). There are a TON of distractions and a lot of noise and it can be really easy to be sucked into them all day long. It’s so important to eliminate distractions and treat your business like you would treat a job and manage your distractions during the day. You wouldn’t watch Netflix at a day job so don’t watch it working from home!
No hours spent on facebook and instagram aimlessly scrolling, and now jumping down the rabbit hole of texting and pinterest.
A few ways I manage my distractions are:
-Newsfeed Eradicator. This hides your FB newsfeed and replaces it with an inspirational quote so you can get in and do the work you need to without falling down the rabbit hole.
-Do not disturb. When I want to buckle down and do work I put my phone on do not disturb. I’m in a ton of group texts and this can really break my focus all day long if my phone is buzzing. I have my VIP’s set to be able to contact me even if do not disturb is on so if anything serious were to happen, they’d still be able to get a hold of me.
-Self Control (the app hah!): SelfControl lets you block your own access to distracting websites, your mail servers, or anything else on the Internet. Just set a period of time to block for, add sites to your blacklist, and click “Start.”
7. Get a good night’s sleep.
I learned this one the hard way in college. I used to think that in order to get everything done I needed to pull all-nighters. I would literally do this multiple days in a row, taking naps in between (only on some occasions). I once stayed up 80 hours straight for a deadline (I DON’T RECOMMEND THAT!) My senior year however, I started trying to get a full 7-8 hours of sleep and something incredible happened. My productivity basically doubled and I was able to get just as much, if not more done than when I was working around the clock, pulling late nights, getting little sleep.
So now, I make sure I get a full 8 hours of sleep if not 9 hours every day. I know that’s what I personally need to function at a high, productive level each day, so I make it a priority. When I get a bad night’s sleep I’m super distracted, unproductive and I just tend to scroll social media over and over and over again.
A study from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine says:
“Getting at least seven hours of nightly sleep is essential to be at your mental, emotional and physical best for whatever you will pour yourself into, either at work or at home,” said American Academy of Sleep Medicine President Dr. Timothy Morgenthaler
8. Plan ahead.
It’s no secret that I love to-do lists and workflows and systems (hello, that’s what I teach!) but this is ABSOLUTELY essential for productivity and success as an entrepreneur. As they say, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. And I realize that a lot of creatives (and entrepreneurs in general) don’t necessarily want routine- heck- you probably quit your job for freedom from your routine, but what you do need, every single day, is a plan of what you want to get done and accomplish.
I brain dump my week on Sundays and then sort my tasks into days that I’m going to do things. Then I go through and figure out how much time each thing should take so I know I’m not biting off more than I can chew on any given day. Every single day, I wake up with a plan and a to-do list so I can get to work without aimlessly scrolling through social media, (which I’d do if I didn’t have a task list!). So plan ahead, plan your tasks and your to-dos so you can actually see them being crossed off and don’t go through your days aimlessly.
So there you have it! 8 Simple Daily Habits Every Entrepreneur Needs to Succeed! Tell me in the comments which one you’re going to implement right away, and then work yourself to doing each of these every day. You will absolutely see a transformation in your personal and professional life. Cheers to success!
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