Stuck At Home Why Your DAILY Routine Matters More Than Ever!
[0:00:00] I think it’s safe to say that for most us
our normal routine day has gone out the window. Seriously, I’ve got a whole new vocabulary.
I understand the difference between social distancing, isolation, and quarantine. And
the bad news is relentless. it’s going to get worse, it’s going to get worse, it’s
going to get worse. So, under normal circumstances, a daily routine
has tons of great benefits. But, under unnormal circumstances, circumstances as such we find
ourselves in today, it is incredibly important. Because here is the thing, you’ve got what’s
called an uncertainty threshold. Everything that you thought was dependable, everything
you thought was a norm, all of a sudden has been thrown on its head.
This in turn with all the other uncertainty that’s going on. You know you got to work
done at your job, are you going to have a job? What’s going on with your family? Are
you parents okay? Guys, what this is doing is it’s triggering
in the brain the fight or flight response. I start watching the news, I fall into the
rabbit hole. Two hours, three hours passed and I’ve just read about twenty articles
on the same thing and guess what? My fear my anxiety levels are shooting up.
So, the first benefit of having a routine is that you give yourself an anchor. You have
a feeling of control, and I’ve been in that situation. High stress going into combat,
and it was something that I thought as a marine a young officer, you know I made sure my marines
were taken care of. And that’s one of the best things you can do is to look after others
because guess what? You’re not thinking about yourself.
But, the other thing here is that, again, you’re simply focused in on what you can
control. I couldn’t control that we’re going to be going into another country and
going to war. You can’t control what’s going on out there right now. You can add
– you can do a little bit and that’s what you want to focus in on, the bit that you
can control. And with the routine, gentlemen, you can actually
set out a list of things that you’re going to throughout – do throughout the day and
you can control that. Now, this feeling of control helps us to reduce
stress and that’s the next benefit of having a routine because it can be something small
like what are you going to have for lunch, and that leads to a huge fight with your spouse,
you get upset with your kids. You don’t want that to happen.
I mean, we’re just simply talking about lunch here by actually setting up a routine,
setting up a schedule, doing meal planning days before or at least that morning deciding,
hey, what – this is what we’re going to have for breakfast, this is what we’re going
to have for lunch, this is what we’re going to have for dinner.
This saves you from actually having to go in there and stress out about something small
and you can save your energy which is the third point I want to highlight. You can save
that cognitive energy for the important decisions that need to happen here soon. Your cognitive
energy, your will power. You’ve only got so much per day, view it
as a glass of water. As you take drinks of this throughout the day, if you drink that
entire glass of water, first thing in the morning, guess what? You don’t have anything
to drink the rest of the day. The same thing if you use all of your energy early on.
And guess what? When you’re checking out the news, when you’re falling down that
rabbit hole and getting all amped up, your body is using that energy that fight and flight.
Again, when you’ve got a routine, you know, okay, I don’t have time to focus in on this,
I’ve got this, this, and this laid out. So, speaking of having things laid out, let’s
talk about prioritizing. That is doing what’s important first and focusing on the big wins.
So, if you’re familiar with the Pareto Principle, 20% of your effort yields you 80% return.
But, let’s go into the deep Pareto Principle, and that’s the 20% of the 20% basically
4% will yield you 64%. And that’s where at the beginning of your day when you’ve
got the most mental energy, you want to focus in on the big wins, the things you can control,
the things you can do to further to enhance your life.
And, by the way, if you’re not familiar with the priority matrix, I’ve got one for
you here. I’m going to link to it down in the description. But, you want to focus in
on what is urgent and what is important. Right now, everything is screaming for your attention.
It’s saying it’s urgent, but is it truly important?
You’re going to find most things out there are not important and that’s what you want
to make sure to prioritize, the things that are important and urgent and then right after
that, actually, almost equally important, things that are important, but non-urgent
because those are the big things that are going to help you take your life in the right
direction. Now, I know a lot of you guys are curious,
“Antonio, what’s your schedule?” What I want to stress here is my schedule is not
set in stone. This is something I aspire to, and that’s the key point is that you want
to put something down and try to meet it. But, it’s okay if you don’t meet it exactly
or if you fail. At least, you tried, you wrote it down and you adjust it to reality.
So, right now, I’m getting up at 5:00 AM. I get up, shower, use the bathroom, start
making coffee. At 6:00 AM, I have coffee with my wife. We just like to spend 30 minutes
together talking. This has been something we’ve done for a long time. At 6:30, I am
now exercising. Right now, into yoga, doing body weight exercises.
At 7:00 AM, I’m making breakfast with my family and at 7:30 AM, I’m getting dressed
for the day. At 8:00 AM, I go into my first company team meeting. And this is something
that’s really important because I’ve got people all over the world. They’re on advance
time zones over in Australia, the Philippines, Ukraine and so, it’s something that I meet
them early in that morning. [0:04:59]
Then, I go in and I film and that’s one of the most important things I’ve got to
do first thing in the morning, sometimes it slips in the afternoon. But filming videos,
this is really where I get my 4%. It’s the small thing that I do which yields the big
return, hence you guys watch the videos, it is so important to my company and I try to
do it as early as I can, although, I fail a lot of times.
Then, I’m getting lunch at 12:00 PM and I like to eat with my family. Just having
my family around me is really important. And one of whole the reasons I set my company
up in a small town and I’ve got an office 800 meters from my house.
At 1:00 PM, 2:00 PM, I’m back in at work, just getting things done. 3:00 PM, I’m wrapping
upward. This is when I like to have most of my meetings, so if I need to do a phone call
with somebody, I recommend to you the end of your day doesn’t take as much, you know,
cognitive power. At 4:00 PM, dinner prep, already back home.
5:00 PM, family dinner. 6:00 PM, 7:00 PM, I’ve got this for relaxing, we’ve been
enjoying movies. And 8:00 PM, getting the kids ready for bed. By 9:00 PM, I’m trying
to get into bed myself. Now, one part about my routine that I want
to stress is that I try not to work more than seven hours a day. I know some of you guys
want to work more or you think you need to work more, but I focus in on results. So,
if you’re new to working from home, if you have a team, if you own a company and you
got them working from home, focus in on the results. It’s not the number of hours, it’s
about what they’re able to get done. Case in point, I’ve got a new company I
launched called Vitaman. I’ve got a project manager, Gavin, I meet with him once a day
for 20 minutes and we focus in on everything he's accomplished. I'm not tracking his hours
because guess what? I don't have time to track his hours and I can't truly track his hours.
But, what I can see are the changes he's making to the website, everything he's improving
with the product descriptions, and how much, you know, we're improving traffic to the website.
Those are the things I measure. And now, that I think about, this is actually
one of the first times I think I'm talking about this here at Real Men Real Style that
I've launched Vitaman with my partner Claire. So, the story is she's been in business for
twenty years making amazing natural grooming products out of Australia using Australia's
natural ingredients. Some really cool stuff I never heard of before.
I tried it and I was blown away, so much so that I reached out to Claire I said, “Hey.
We have to get you in the United States. More people need to know about this company and
the products you're making. We need to be selling this stuff online because more men
need to be.” Because think about you’re putting on this aftershave balm, you're putting
on that skin lotion, you're shampooing your hair and oftentimes using all these nasty
ingredients which aren't natural. Vitaman has you covered when it comes to shampoo.
And what I love about their shampoos is that they've got, okay, first up, you got the face
and body wash. Yep, using natural materials. But, we've got volumizing shampoo. So, you
got thin hair? We've got you covered. Moisturizing shampoo. So, if you've got dry hair, we've
got you covered. If you have oily hair, we've got you covered.
And we've got of course conditioners that work with that. The shave gel, I love it.
And what I love about some of the – so, the shave oil plus the shave gel with the
aftershave balm, if you're dealing with nicks, if you're dealing with bumps after you shave,
this combination is amazing. But, it was this aftershave balm that really,
well, the first time I tried this, it uses this aloe it goes right into the skin. It's
incredibly clear, it doesn't feel sticky. I've tried so many bad aftershave bumps and
this one just blew all the other ones away. And, gents, don't even get me started about
the moisturizers. The face moisturizer, friggin awesome. The body moisturizer. So, we've got
guys that trained for Ironman. They do a lot of swimming, biking, running, and they're
showering multiple times. They're exposing their skin to a lot of rough stuff.
And we've got people that swear by this. They buy like three to four bottles every single
month because they're showering twice a day, their skin is getting all red and rashed.
They use this to calm down the rash and they love the natural products.
Gents, I'm linking to my company, Vitaman down in the description of today's video.
I would appreciate it if you at least check it out. And, let me know, give me feedback,
send me an email, let me know, hey, Antonio, I would change this, I would improve this,
because they're all interrelated, and that is use a routine to manage your exercise,
use a routine to manage your food intake, use a routine to manage your mood, and use
a routine to manage your mental health. So, that last one, incredibly important, I'm
going to spend a lot of time on it. But, let's talk about your exercise and your food. So,
you had routines whether you knew it or not. Maybe you didn't plan them, but you had a
set time that you had to be at work, you had a set time that you would probably go out
to lunch with your friends. All of a sudden, that has been thrown out the window, things
have changed. [0:09:59]
And it's very easy to miss your exercise time, to miss the time that you should actually
eat a meal. You get busy with a project, you're in the zone, all of a sudden, you have skipped
lunch and that pushes everything else back. You start missing your workouts.
When you have a routine, you are actually following that, all of a sudden, you don't
miss that workout because that workout is so important to that third point which is
your mood, the food and when you're eating is so important to your mood, getting the
swings. Right now, a lot of you guys the food you're
eating may not be as healthy as it used to be because all of a sudden you're not getting
access to all the fruits and vegetables you used to have. You bought a lot of food that
would maybe last longer. This can negatively affect your mood.
Getting to that last point, a routine is key for mental health. Again, we talked about
at the very beginning all that negative emotion all that fear really tears down on your mental
health. You need to be paying attention to it more than ever. I'm going to put some links
down in the description to resources for mental health isolation and the feeling of loneliness.
Human beings are social animals and I think that's one of the big problems that’s not
being talked about that’s going to emerge over the next few months is just simply human
beings want to be around other human beings. So, pay attention to your mental health.
One of the first things and the best things you can do is to simply recognize that you
may have an issue or recognize that you may want to improve this because then if you understand
this if you spot it, you can ask for help, you can bring it up to others. And there's
no shame, guys, in asking for help for seeking advice when it comes to this.
Now, I want to talk about daily routines and preventing burnout and preventing negative
emotions from running into your family. So, preventing burnout. Guys, it is so easy
when you work from home to not stop. You wake up, first thing you do is check your work
email. It's 6:00 AM and you're already working. All of a sudden, your entire morning routine
is being thrown off. Guys, you've got to have set hours in which
you work. If you let that creep into your personal time, if you're not able to turn
off and unplug, you want to have set hours you want to be able to shut that computer
off, you want to be able to turn off your phone. I know for me when I'm relaxing with
my family in the evening, that is our time. In the morning, I've got time with my wife.
Now, the day, yes, that is to the pressing concerns of my company, but when I shut down
my computer at 4:00 PM, guess what? I'm not -- I mean, yeah, yeah, I'm not worried about
things. Understand that business has to go on without you. Yes, there's a lot of negativity
out there, but don't fall into working 24 hours a day and all of a sudden just burn
out because then you're not going to be of any use to anybody.
Now, let's talk about the negative creeping into your family. So, if you've got a family,
if you've got a partner, if you've got people you around, you've got to understand that
the negative emotions coming out of this, this can detrimentally affect your kids, it
can affect your spouse and your wife. You need to be aware of this. It's going to happen,
you're going to let some of it creep over. This happens to all of us.
If you feel this explosion coming on, if you have anger issues, you want to be very careful
with, you know, being able to manage it, and that's where a schedule is so useful because
if you know that, oh, by midday you're going to be stressed out, schedule a time to go
-- that's when you go for the scheduled walk. That is the time when you break away, you
shut down the computer, and you do a hundred push-ups, you go to your pull-up bar. You
find a way to vent out that stress before you explode like a volcano.
Now, I want to talk about taking advantage of the current situation versus the situation
taking advantage of you. In one year, in two years where do you want to be? It's so important
when you've got that schedule, when you have that routine laid out, you know what this
is leading towards, that you've got a big goal.
During this time, I'm scheduling one hour in my schedule to start writing that novel,
to start getting and working on that YouTube channel I'm going to get started. To get started
on whatever dream you may have that career shift, you are spending that time build up
over months, over weeks, over years, you can accomplish an amazing feat.
Or what you're going to find in two years if you don't schedule things out if you just
follow things haphazardly, you go along with, you know, whatever the current, you're going
to find you have accomplished nothing, none of your big goals. And the time flew by and
you are in no better situation than you were – actually, you're in a worse situation
than you were before the whole crisis started. I highly advise, gentlemen, you put together
a detailed schedule and you've got, you know, go into the more detail the better because
this schedule right here is going to set you free. It actually is going to give you more
freedom because you have the ability you now have the time to focus in on the things that
matter. So, what video to watch next? Well, let's
talk about COVID-19, but in a positive light. Yeah, we're going to talk about the fear,
we're going to talk about the chaos, but we're also going to talk about all the opportunities
that are out there, the ability for you to change to pivot to go after your dreams while
everyone else is, yeah, putting their head in the sand. No! You are going out there and
you are making change for the better. [0:14:58] End of audio