Highly productive people do things differently than most people. They have specific habits,
routines and systems in place that enable them to be highly effective and efficient.
In fact, they even spend their Sundays differently compared to most people.
After studying hundreds of high-performers across many fields (whether business, entertainment,
art or sports) I discovered that most of them have a Sunday ritual in which they do five
specific things that help them perform at peak productivity levels during the following week.
These five habits only have to take about 30 to 60 minutes, so you can spend the rest of
your day relaxing and doing other fun stuff. Yet, the pay-off will be more than worth it.
Habit #1: Setting Goals One of the things that
highly productive people do every Sunday is setting new goals for the week ahead.
It may only take a few minutes to do, but it will make you a
lot more productive and, ultimately, successful. Most people already do some form of goal-setting.
Often, they set long-term goals for themselves, such as one-year or three-year goals.
Unfortunately, however, most people fail to achieve these bigger goals
because they don’t take consistent action upon their goals on a daily or weekly basis.
The antidote to this is to break your bigger goals down into smaller ones (such as quarterly,
monthly, weekly and daily goals) so that you have multiple checkpoints on your road to achievement.
When you only have goals that have their deadlines somewhere far into the future, you won’t feel the
pressure or motivation to work hard on them in the short-term. However, by setting 1–3 weekly
goals for yourself every Sunday, you’re building a goal-achievement system around you that ensures
you take consistent action in the short-term, which helps you in achieving your long-term goals.
Therefore, every Sunday, take a few minutes to set 1–3 weekly goals that
will help you get significantly closer to your monthly, quarterly and yearly goals.
Make sure that you set very precise and specific goals so that you can clearly measure your
progress and define when you’ve achieved them. Habit #2: Planning The Upcoming Week
Besides setting goals, highly productive people also take a few minutes to plan their
upcoming week. This one thing alone can provide so much clarity and structure to your work,
as you know exactly what and when you need to work on certain tasks.
Planning your week removes a lot of ambiguity, which is key in working without friction and
keeping procrastination low. Furthermore, you can make sure that you actually achieve your weekly
goals as you protect the time for them beforehand. As Abraham Lincoln said: “Give me six hours
to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.”
Personally, I like to schedule my week both in Google calendar and a physical calendar
so that I can be confronted with it multiple times during the day. This
helps me to stay focused and work with clarity. I clearly notice that when I don’t schedule my
days and weeks, I waste much more time working on lower priority tasks, I experience more friction
and I tend to procrastinate much more. However, as soon as I have full clarity
about what to do and when to do it, the provided structure helps me to be much more effective.
Bonus Tip: Protect the mornings to work (distraction-free) on your most important tasks.
The rest of the day will feel like a breeze. Furthermore, you’ll consistently make progress
on your most important projects as you prevent yourself from procrastinating
on your important tasks when using this rule (which I call, ‘eating your veggies first’).
Habit #3: Reviewing The Previous Week By reflecting on what went well and what didn’t go
well, you can gather valuable insights that will help you work even more effectively next week.
In fact, I’ve experienced that by merely reflecting on your progress and achievements
for a few minutes each Sunday, you can save yourself days, weeks or even months of hard work.
When you step back from your work and reflect on what’s going well and what can be done better,
you slowly but surely remove the productivity sabotaging blindspots out of your life.
This will save you a lot of time, frustration and energy in the future.
Personally, I like to ask myself the following questions during my reflection session:
Did I achieve my weekly goal(s)? If no, why not? If yes, what went well?
What activities/products/people/actions have contributed to the biggest majority
of my results over the past week? What efforts/activities/products/people
have consumed my time and energy but didn’t lead to a lot of results (if any at all)?
What could I have done better in order to be more productive and focussed?
What habits have been essential to my happiness, productivity, focus and energy?
What were the blind spots and unforeseen events that happened that I should learn from?
By asking yourself these questions, you gain more clarity on both your priorities and on
the time and energy consuming activities that don’t lead to a lot of results. Essentially,
you identify what you should do more and less of — and that’s a powerful productivity booster.
Therefore, every Sunday, take a few minutes to review your previous week.
It will pay off. Habit #4: Journaling
Journaling is incredibly powerful for gaining mental clarity as you’re getting thoughts
and ideas out of your head and onto paper. When you find yourself worrying about a few
things, your internal chatter can hinder you a lot in staying focused and productive. By getting them
out of your head and onto paper, you’ll find that the inner chatter calms down a lot. This frees up
your mental energy and headspace to think clearly, solve problems and generate new creative ideas.
Furthermore, I like to write out any ideas that I have so that I can determine the next action
steps and work them out with more structure. If the idea turns out to be valuable, I can then
schedule some time for it in the upcoming week or even set a weekly goal based on it.
Therefore, I encourage you to sit down with a pen and journal for at least 15 minutes
(without distractions) and see what comes up. You might just be surprised by what you’ll find.
Habit #5: Reading Through reading,
you can learn from the people who have walked the path before you. You can learn from their
mistakes without having to make them yourself and shortcut the process towards achieving your goals.
This makes you more productive and better equipped to achieve your most ambitious goals.
That’s why people like Mark Cuban insist on reading 3 hours per day. Bill Gates
reads for at least 1 hour as part of his bedtime routine and Warren Buffett
spends a large part of his day reading. Personally, I can say that reading
self-development and business books is the number one reason why I am where I am today.
It’s how I’m able to earn my money online and live a more fulfilling life than I used to. Without
books, I honestly wouldn’t know where I would be. Warren Buffett once said: “Read 500 pages
like this every day. That’s how knowledge works. It builds up,
like compound interest. All of you can do it, but I guarantee not many of you will do it.”
Since reading is so powerful, I actually encourage you to do it every single day.
However, in the busyness of life, it can sometimes be hard to actually make that happen. Therefore,
schedule some time to read during the weekends, when you (probably) have less on your plate.
Now Do It
If you want to become more productive and, ultimately, more successful,
I highly encourage you to take action upon these 5 habits for this upcoming Sunday.