Do It Today: Overcome Procrastination, Improve Productivity, and Achieve More Meaningful Things

From minute 0 to minute 10: Close The Day
Every evening I take 10 minutes to journal about my day. In
a few sentences, I write about what I’ve accomplished, what
I’ve learned, and anything that’s worth remembering. That
simple exercise helps me to:
1. Remember what I did (sounds stupid, but we forget
most things we do).
2. Review my progress and see whether I’m doing all
the things that I 
should
be doing (like reading,
working out, spending time with my family, writing,
talking to people I work with).
I’ve learned this exercise from Jim Rohn. He says:
“At the end of each day, you should play back the tapes of
your performance. The results should either applaud you or
prod you.”
It’s simple: Close the day before you start a new day. Also,
close every week before you start a new week. Similar for
every month, and every year. Sounds simple, right? It’s one
of those “simple” ideas that have a huge impact on your
life.
From minute 10 to minute 20: Review
Tomorrow’s Calendar
This is essential. When you wake up, you want to know
exactly what your day is about. Do you have any important
meetings or calls? Deadlines, maybe? What do you have to
get done? When are you working out? Do you have any
pressing items on your agenda? When are you dealing with
them?

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This simple exercise takes away almost all stress and
anxiety I have. Most anxiety comes from unsolved problems.
And often, we worry about problems that are not real. But
when you say to yourself: I’m going to work on problem X
from 10 AM until 11 AM, you can relax.
Also, there’s nothing you can do late in the evening. Just go
to bed, already. Leave the problem solving for tomorrow
when your brain is fresh.
From minute 20 to minute 25: Prepare your outfit
“Oh, you’re so vain.” No, I don’t want to unnecessarily stress
my brain. Look, your brain is a muscle. And after a certain
amount of decisions, your brain runs out of juice. And that
means the quality of your decisions will decrease.
That’s called 
Decision Fatigue
. But I’m not worried about
that in the evening because I’m headed to bed so my brain
can recharge. A few extra decisions won’t hurt. However,
those few extra decisions will hurt your productivity if you
think about your outfit in the morning. So why not prepare
your outfit so you don’t have to use your precious
brainpower in the morning?