Tips on How I Stuck to My Routine in 2020: Weekly and Daily Habits to Ensure Peak Performance

This year has been trying for us all. While being stuck in isolation for weeks and even months for some of us, it completely flipped our schedules and routines around. With restrictions being implemented all over the place, like gyms and fitness studios being closed, good habits became even more of a challenge to stick to. It became a whole lot easier to make excuses to just sit around and watch TV or play videogames.

To say the least, our daily routines have been tested in 2020. But like anything, there were some major positives to take away from it all. Personally, I enjoyed the downtime to spend at home. Not having to deal with any rush hour traffic, since my new office was just a few feet away from my bedroom. This all allowed me to do some of those things that I never seem to have time for. (Please comment or message me with anything positive that you experienced during isolation. I'd love to hear from you).

In my last post, I shared my story of the adversity that I have faced over 2020. It has been quite a test for me to overcome the challenges that I have been faced with. There is a number of key reasons that I have overcome the adversity that I experienced, but a huge factor for me has been sticking to my daily routine as best as I can. I sometimes falter on certain days, but I just work hard at trying to be 1% better than the day before. I always try to make sure that I never fall away from a daily habit for more than two days in a row. A great way to keep track of this is through a habit tracker that I have in my journal.

This allows me to review my habits on a monthly basis, where I can easily evaluate all of my habits and see which ones are working for me and which ones aren't. If something isn't really sticking over a couple of months I will try out something new. Some habits are specific to a monthly challenge that I'm doing (no drinking, no sweets, no screentime after 8pm, etc.). Or, if I'm learning something new or have a project I'm working on I'll put in a habit or two that are specific to getting the project done. There are a couple of habits that I try to do every day (gratitude and writing in my journal). After that the goal isn't to hit every one of my habits every day. Part of the review process is to set a goal of how many days I want to hit each specific habit over the course of the month. Check out my habit tracker for December:

There are certain habits that are staples in my life. Not all of the habits I cover below are done every day and aren't even tracked in my habit tracker, but these are all key parts to me living what I deem for myself as a healthy lifestyle. An important factor in instilling the daily habits is I try to do them around the same time in the day. This has to do with eliminating decision fatigue, which helps me to stay hyper-focused throughout the day. I'm not about to go and wear the same outfit every day like Zuckerberg or Steve Jobs; I feel like that is quite extreme, but decision fatigue is a real thing.

A personal example of this is my morning workouts vs later in the day. When I don't get it done first thing, I feel like the thought of when I'm going to workout lingers in my head for the rest of the day. This then distracts me at different times throughout the day. When I just get up and exercise first thing, I don't have to think about it at all for the rest of the day and waste any brainpower on making that decision.

Here are my key habits along with some tips on how I stuck to them in 2020:

Stay Active

This is key in my life. It keeps me physically fit, but more importantly, it keeps my mind right. Exercise releases endorphins, feel-good hormones, which will make you feel less stressed. Personally, I like to get my workouts done in the morning. I aim to get a workout in first thing in the morning, at least 3 to 4 days a week. On the days that I accomplish this, I feel incredibly energized for the rest of the day. Secondly, it feels great to accomplish something first thing in the morning. Then the bonus is that after I'm done my work for the day I have time to spend with my wife, visit family, see friends, maybe go for a long walk or shoot some hoops, or spend some time for myself (playing the piano, reading, or working on me). The evening is free for my leisure and pleasure!

When the pandemic hit and I was isolated to my home or after I became unemployed I could have easily sat around and look at my sudden free-time as an opportunity to catch up on Netflix, but I knew what kind of rabbit-hole that could take me down. Staying active keeps me focused on moving ahead, rather than sitting still.

If you are looking for easy ways to exercise, check out the FitPlan app. They have a ton of great workouts from various professional athletes and trainers that you can do either at home or at the gym. It's great because it provides you a variety of programs that you can follow or even single workouts if you are just looking for a new workout from time-to-time. You can track your workouts right on the app and they are easy to follow along. This way you just have to show up and not even think about what you are going to do today. Again, helping with decision fatigue. They even provide some live workouts to do at home. It's a very easy & affordable way to stay in shape.

Also, another tip I can provide is to make staying active fun. I really enjoy playing sports so I get out to play hockey as often as I can or I was on a men's league basketball team. During the pandemic, I'd schedule a day or two during the week to go to a court and shoot around. This way I was getting out of the house and doing something that I enjoy. (I'd love to get any comments on how you stayed active through 2020).

Photo Cred: Jason Harding KOBE!!!!!!

Eat a Healthy, Well-Balanced Diet

Staying active and eating healthy seem to go hand-in-hand for me. I know I have to fuel the body properly in order to stay active. Food is fuel and I consider healthy food as premium fuel. Don't get me wrong, I love my ice cream, cheeseburgers, and pizza, but I just feel so much better when I'm eating healthy. That's why I try to keep a 90-10 Rule. Eat 9 healthy meals to my every 'cheat' meal. This way you are eating healthy, nutritious meals the majority of the time and then getting some of those sweets and things that you enjoy from time-to-time. It's important to eat a balanced diet so then you can avoid weight gain and the feeling that you have to go on a 'diet.'

Recently I've gone plant-based to support my wife in her journey to figure out her stomach issues. I've felt major benefits from a mainly plant-based diet. Lighter on my feet, less groggy after a meal, better digestion, and overall more energy. There are a ton of benefits of eating healthy, regardless of if it is plant-based or not. Among those are the obvious; weight-loss and decreased risk of cancer and heart disease. Then there are improvements in mood and memory. Find something that works for you because it will positively influence the rest of your life, including the people in your life. For people with families, it will instill good habits in your children, and ensure that they live a healthy lifestyle.

Thanks to my wife, we have had a well-balanced diet for a long time. She keeps me in check. She has even just started her own side business called The Wholistic Method. Go Check it Out!

Some tricks that help us to consistently eat healthy are: (1) We plan out our meals for the week ahead of time; (2) make a grocery list on our shared notes on our phones; (3) stay out of the middle aisles at the grocery store as much as we can (those middle aisles are where all the junk is stocked); and (4) We do some meal prep, like cut-up veggies, and do anything that is fairly time-consuming a couple of different times a week, cutting down our prep time for dinners. These are things that work for us to ensure we are cooking the majority of our meals. Then when we eat out we really look forward to it and always thoroughly enjoy the meal. It's a great way for us to look forward to a date out together.

It does help that we both enjoy cooking, but that honestly does come with practice in the kitchen. We use it as a time for us to spend together at the end of the day, usually throwing in a little two-stepping in the kitchen while we are at it.

Meditate

Meditation is something that I have been practicing for nearly a year. I joined a meditation challenge right before Christmas last year, and it honestly changed my life. On those days that I don't do it, I notice a difference. I feel more anxious, more irritable, and less focused. I usually meditate for at least 10 minutes in the morning and then also sometimes before I go to bed if I find my mind is feeling scattered and thinking about all the things I have to do tomorrow. That's what usually will keep me up if anything. I use Insight Timer, which has a ton of courses and also free sessions on there. They range from beginner, short-sessions, to advanced visualization sessions. I'd recommend trying out 5-minute sessions to start and see how you feel afterward.

Like anything, meditation takes practice. At first, you will find it hard to concentrate on your breathing, while your mind wanders off thinking about different things. I still deal with it, but I've got better and better at quickly catching my mind wandering off by focusing back on my breathing. The coolest thing I have found is that some of the things that I have visualized and manifested during my meditation sessions, I've had signs of them popping up in my life. I feel as if the signs have always been there, but I've now started to recognize signs that are pointing me towards my true purpose.

Daily Gratitude

I have been doing daily gratitude for the last few years, which has just given such a greater appreciation for what I have in my life. I have enjoyed life's journey much more since practicing daily gratitude. "In positive psychology research, gratitude is strongly and consistently associated with greater happiness. Gratitude helps people feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve their health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships." Harvard Medical School.

To start, my wife introduced me to The Magic. This book takes you through a 28-day journey, reading a different chapter every day that comes along with daily practices. One consistent practice throughout the 28-days is writing down 10 things you are grateful for first thing in the morning. I was feeling a little lost a few years ago so my wife put this book in front of me and suggested that I go through the 28-day journey. It proved to be an extremely beneficial way for me to better appreciate life's journey. Writing 10 different things down every day really makes you think about all the different aspects of life to be grateful for. It really opened my eyes to life's beauty. I found myself happier, more positive, and my life's path just got a whole lot clearer.

I now use The Five-Minute Journal as my daily gratitude journal. It is an easy way to stay on top of my daily gratitude, to consistently improve my well-being. It's great to start and end the day with and literally doesn't take anything more than 5 minutes.

Daily Journal

Over the past few months, I have been writing daily journal entries, which has really helped to get things off my mind and out on paper. It's a great way for me to self-express, become more self-aware, and reflect. I've found I've become more in touch with my emotions and feelings and over time I've more naturally written down whatever thoughts come to mind. I've gone back and read some of my entries from a few months ago, I'm amazed at how much I have developed. I was writing a lot of surface-level stuff, whereas now I'm finding I'm connecting deeper into my core emotions.

I feel now that I am expressing myself more in conversations, releasing my emotions, and being more vulnerable. It has also improved my decision-making. Then my creative output has improved, getting rid of my 'creative block' that I felt like I had for the longest time.

Get a Good Sleep

I've come to grips that my body likes 8 hours of sleep. I've tried to tell myself that I only need 7 hours of sleep, but I clearly need 8 hours. I can get away with 7, but then I'm a little cranky and hit a wall a lot earlier in the day. Experts say that you should get between 7 to 9 hours of sleep a night, depending on the type of person you are. Now this also doesn't mean that as soon as you go to bed you count that as part of your sleep. 7 to 9 hours of sleep means actual sleep time. I try to be in bed before 10pm so that I'm naturally waking up before 6 am when my alarm actually goes off. In order to sleep right away, I have found a go-to routine before bed that works for me. I start the routine around 8:30pm:

1. Start my wind down by shutting down any screens (TV, computer, phone) at least 1 hour before bed.
2. Journal- Write until I feel like I have got everything off my mind. Typically I write about the day and what things are top priority to get done tomorrow. This transitions nicely into what I do next.
3. Review my schedule for the next day. Write out my morning routine and 2 goals I have for the next day.
4. Read until my eyes feel heavy then I go get into bed.

Don't do this...

Morning Routine - My Power 5

I learned this Power 5 method from my dear-friend Cam Speck. The idea with this is to create a list of the 5 things that are going to set your day up for success. These should be done every morning. My 5 things consist of:

(1) Wake up before 6am;

(2) 60 minute Morning Workout/Movement (explained above);

(3) Journal - 5-minute Gratitude Journal (explained above), & Morning Pages (3 pages of long-form writing, which is whatever is on my mind. This is a practice that I learned through The Artist's Way. Talk further about this below),

(4) Meditate, and;

(5) My 2 Top priority tasks for the day (I get these done before I do anything else). My goal is to have those done before noon every day.

Once I complete one of the five above I check it off. Then when I successfully complete all of my Power 5, I draw a huge colorful W through the page.

This whole process that Cam created was learned from Atomic Habits by James Clear. Following James Clear's Four Laws of Behaviour Change. (1) Obvious - Sometimes a habit will be hard to remember and you'll need to make it obvious; (2) Attractive - other times you won't feel like starting and you'll need to make it attractive; (3) Easy - you may find that a habit will be too difficult and you'll need to make it easy; and (4) Satisfying - sometimes you won't feel like sticking with it and you'll need to make it satisfying.

(1) By writing it out I make it obvious.

(2) To make it attractive I do two things that Clear recommends. First, I've reprogrammed my brain to enjoy hard habits by changing one word: I don't "have" to, to I "get" to. Example: I get to wake up early and get my workout out of the way. Secondly, I wake up and workout with my wife. 'We tend to imitate the habits of those close to us (family and friends), the many (the tribe), or the powerful (those with status and prestige)' James Clear. By getting the workout done together first we feel so much better and we are setting our day up for success. This we find so much more attractive.

(3) To make the morning routine easy I make sure my cellphone is plugged in away from my bed so I have to get up to shut my alarm off. Then immediately go to the bathroom splash cold water in my face and brush my teeth. Then I also set out my workout clothes the night before so they are already out and all I have to do is put them on, rather than searching for what to wear. James Clear even recommends wearing workout clothes to bed to make it as easy as possible to start. Other small practices, like setting out my journals on my desk the night before and dating the page, have helped to make my morning routine easy.

(4) One of the best ways to make it satisfying is by having a habit tracker. I have my daily Power 5 and my habit tracker in the same journal. This way, at the end of the day, I check off all of the habits I did that day, and then I write out my Power 5 then date it for the next day. Then like I talked about earlier, I give myself a big 'W' after I complete my Power 5 each morning. This is a small and easy satisfaction that I enjoy every day.

Invest in Yourself

I read that if you put a cat in your blog post you're guaranteed to go viral (insert fingers crossed emoji)

I'm a pretty avid reader so I made a list of 3 books that I wanted to read in the month after I was let go from my previous job. First, I read Atomic Habits. As you can see from above, I thought this book was awesome. The author, James Clear, provides what he calls "An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones." He does exactly that. His whole philosophy is to make tiny changes over time that will compound into remarkable results. He states 'the holy grail of habit change is not a single 1 percent improvement, but a thousand of them.' I highly recommend it.

Second, I read The Power of Now. This was an enlightening book on how to be more present and think in the now. Truthfully I had to go back to the beginning after reading a few chapters to see if I had missed something. It's a pretty deep book that takes your full attention. After going back to the beginning, I decided to just read one chapter at a time, which I'm glad I did rather than just moving on to another book. I caught myself several times not being in the NOW while reading this book, so it was a bit of an eye-opener to the distractions that I have running through my head. The author, Eckhart Tolle, doesn't hold anything back. Some people may even get offended by how blunt he is, but I have to say that this book has made me be more present.

Then lastly I read Scaling Up, How a few companies make it...and why the rest don't. I really recommend this book to anyone that is considering starting a company, has recently started a company, or really anyone in the small business/start-up phase. It provides a great blueprint for businesses to start and scale properly. This I am currently using myself and will continue to go back to.

Two days after I finished this book, I was listening to a podcast, Skinny Confidential, while my wife and I were driving (My wife listens to this religiously. I have to admit that there is some major value in this podcast. I guarantee anyone in a relationship will find humour and appreciate the husband and wife's relationship banter between each other). This episode had a guest, David Hauser, who successfully built the Grasshopper Group then later sold it for $170 million without giving up any equity of the company. During the podcast, David highly recommends Scaling Up as a book to read for any entrepreneur or anyone considering starting a business. Check out the episode because he has a great explanation on why it is a great book to read for any entrepreneur.

The second thing I did to invest in myself was took a course on digital marketing. I signed up for Udemy's online course on digital marketing. Some of the course was quite entry-level, but some of it was quite valuable for me since I am still quite entry-level in certain areas. It's a great course to start with and I'm now more aware of different areas I want to expand even further in. It also provides me some more knowledge so that I'm better prepared to speak and present to clients, as well as have more engaging conversations with experts in the digital space. Lastly, I have a better understanding of hiring needs as our digital media company grows and we want to expand into other areas.

I would recommend checking out Udemy, Coursera, or Skillshare. All of them have a wide range of courses that you can take and have a free trial period. Skillshare has a two-month free trial period when you sign up with a new email. I've used it a couple of different times with different emails and got some value out of them. I've taken a course on writing, as well as one on business finance because I needed a refresher.

One more thing I did to invest in myself was The Artist's Way, which I have referenced a couple of different times earlier in this post. Earlier this year, I had written a couple of blog posts while I was at my last employer and quite enjoyed it. After I was let go I felt that I had writer's block because it was quite a struggle every time I went to go write something new. My intuitive wife picked up on that and went and bought this book for me because she had heard on several occasions that this book has been instrumental for people to get through their creative block. I'm now on week 10 of this book and it has been incredible (hence me writing a couple more blog posts after a 5-month hiatus).

Julia Cameron is an acclaimed writer, who wrote this book to help people get in touch with their creative process. She has different weekly tasks to do, along with morning pages (3 pages of long-form journal entries. Writing whatever is on your mind), as well as a weekly Artist Date. At first, some of the things seem quite out there, but I realized that is the whole point. Part of the creative process is getting over your insecurities and getting back in touch with your inner child. The one that had all of these dreams and aspirations of being whatever I wanted. It really taught me that there is no such thing as 'It is too late to do that.' I can confidently say that it is working for me. I've quite enjoyed getting back in touch with my inner child.

Get Outside and into Nature

When I previously got let go from my former employer, I was actually on vacation when it happened. I was in disbelief that it had happened and quickly became furious. Thankfully that quickly went away because I was literally on my way to getting on a boat on the beautiful Lake Okanagan. It was very therapeutic to be out in the sun and staring out over the beautiful lake. I remember sitting on the bow of the boat watching the sunset and saying to myself that I was just so happy that I got to spend the day out on a beautiful lake with a great group of friends. It was definitely a great end of the day watching the sunset over the mountains in the distance. Extremely therapeutic for what I had experienced earlier in the day.

After I got home, I was speaking with a mentor of mine, who recommended that I get out in nature as much as possible over the next few weeks. He guaranteed it would help with overcoming the stress and frustration that comes along with adversity. Outdoor activities, especially in nature, have been proven to reduce stress levels. Since I lived in Calgary, I took the opportunity to go on a number of hikes in the Rocky Mountains, which allowed me to decompress by connecting with nature. I hadn't been on a hike in nearly 2 years; since before I joined the company that I had just got let go from. During these hikes, I made a promise to myself that I would spend more time outdoors doing things that I enjoy. These hikes were an essential part of overcoming adversity for me.

Photo Cred: Jason Harding

Enjoyed some Downtime

I took this as an opportunity to figure out my next steps, but just as important I took it as an opportunity to spend some time doing things that I enjoy. Obviously, there were some limits on what I could do with the COVID restrictions in place, but it just narrowed my list down even further. Most importantly I spent some good quality time with family, I got out for a few rounds of golf with friends, and I went and shot around a basketball several times. I spent a day watching some old movies that I hadn't seen in a long time. I played piano, drew, listened to old music, and even went to a record store. I got in touch with my inner child, as suggested by The Artist's Way, which became an instrumental part of the creation process. I knew that my personal output was going to be essential to starting a new business so I needed to get my creative block out of the way. Rather than just trying to fight through the creative block, getting in touch with my inner child generated creativity, which naturally pushed the creative block out of the way.

It was incredible to intentionally take more downtime. Shay and I found that our relationship grew through quarantine, getting to spend more quality time together. We had more meaningful conversations. We built a dream board together. We played more games. We laid in bed all day and watched Netflix one day. We even learned dances on TikTok (click to check it out :) ).

We slow danced in the living room (this is actually nothing new); took the dog for even longer walks; made dinners for each other; had a picnic; went for long drives listening to music or podcasts. It really slowed our world down, making us appreciate the small things, appreciate the life that we had, and reflect on what is most important to both of us. I will ensure that I make for some meaningful downtime out of my week moving forward.

Be Positive & Be Present

There is good that came from COVID. Some of us may have to search for it harder than others, but I'm confident that there will be a silver lining in all of this. I've worked hard to stay positive and concentrate on those things that make me happy. During my meditation sessions, I have visualized my dreams of the house I want to raise a family in, the business I want to build, and the places I want to see. This then allows me to focus on what I need to do to work towards those dreams by taking action right now. Beyond my visualization practice, I try not to worry about tomorrow, or next year, or even the next hour. Now is where everything happens. I'm grateful for my life at this very moment.