Finish Your Day off Strong with Good Evening Routines

A couple of weeks ago I talked about morning routines and how they are critical to starting your day off strong. Today I will be addressing other critical routine that everyone must nail down, and that is the evening routine.

Much like how an effective morning routine will set you up for success throughout the day, an effective evening routine will allow your finish your day strong and will put you in a good position to begin the next day.

So lets get into this…

What you should include in your evening routine

Typically, your structured evening routine will be about the last hour of your day, but there will be aspects of your evening routine that will begin long before that.

The structured part of your evening routine could include a number of things depending on personal preference, what stage of life you’re in, and what you get done during the day.

Some things that I think you should strongly consider:

·        Daily reflection

·        Journaling

·        Reading

·        Prayer

This is what I include in the final hour of my day, every day. For me, having the final hour of the day completely structured with important but not urgent tasks has helped me to be productive during the time when it is hardest to be productive.

Some other things that could be included might be going on a short walk, writing, or meditation. Feel free to try whatever you want in this last structured hour of the day as long as it doesn’t include any screens and it is relaxing for you.

One of the important aspects of a good evening routine is that it will help your sleep schedule and sleep quality.

What you should avoid in an evening routine

One rule I like to follow in order to improve my sleep is the Liftoff Rule:

·        10 hours before bed be stop consuming caffeine – this will give the caffeine time to get out of your system so it won’t affect your sleep

·        3 hours before bed stop consuming heavy foods– this will help stop you from getting acid reflux (however, I have found light foods like berries to be fine)

·        2 hours before bed stop doing all work – you need time to allow your brain to wind down from the days work, if you carry that stuff with you to bed it will affect your sleep

·        1 hour before bed turn off all screens – the blue light from the screens prevents your brain from releasing hormones that help you to fall asleep because it thinks it is still daytime outside. This may seem like a particularly hard one to stick to but if you have scheduled out the last hour of your day with the things I mentioned above, you will easily have one hours’ worth of activities that don’t include screens.

Tips for implementation and refining your routine

Make sure that you have your evening routine written out so you know how long you will spend on each activity, and when your routine will start.

Then I suggest setting an alarm for the time you need to start your routine; this will help you to make sure you don’t miss your time and end up pushing back your sleep for the night.

Make sure to keep experimenting with a variety of different things in your evening routine, or time allocations, in order to find out what works best for you and what helps you to end your day feeling the best.

As always, be open to new ideas. You never know when someone may suggest something that you never thought about that could have an incredible impact on your routine and life.

That’s all I have for you today. Remember that knowledge without implementation is wasted time. Go out and take action, write up an evening routine, try it out, experiment with it, and find what works best for you. Good luck.