Bookend Your Day

“Think in the morning, act in the noon, read in the evening, and sleep at night.”_William Blake

                                                       

Encarta defines bookend as follows: “Make something occur, on both sides or at the beginning and end of something (else).” 

I first heard of the concept of daily bookend from the Darren Hardy, the author of a great audio book entitled, ‘The Compound Effect.’ 

In his book, Darren explained the concept as a strategy for making the most of our mornings and taking complete charge of the evenings.

In essence, when you bookend your day, you deliberately plan to accommodate spontaneity during the day but you fiercely refuse any interference at the star and end of every day.

This one concept, if thoroughly understood and applied can elevate our game to a whole new level. As Darren Hardy clearly conveyed; it is one of the best kept secrets of highly effective people.

Whenever I study the biographies of great leaders of nations and industries, one strong pattern that I notice is that the kind of things they do early in the morning is extremely different from the engagements of an average person. They use the start of their days to accomplish tasks of supreme value.

And this is easier for them to do repeatedly because of an intentionally designed evening routine, which reduces the amount of friction that could stand in the way of their high performance every following morning. 

Evidently, a habit driven routine is the simplest strategy we can use to make steady progress towards our goals because it enables essential things in our lives to move on auto pilot; it enables us to stay on course towards realizing our ambitions in an almost effortless fashion. 

Roy Baumeister, the author of ‘Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength,’ says that when we strategically design our daily routine for high performance; we are making a very smart choice in the management of a precious but limited resource of willpower.

From practical experience, a good routine not only conserves our willpower; it also provides the very support we need to withstand the ups and downs of everyday life.

Once a morning routine is thoroughly established, we will easily tackle some of the important tasks of the day before the chaos and interruptions of life could ever get in our way.

How to Start Your Bookend

With this insight into the power of routine, I am guessing someone is pumped up to get started right away.

To such a go-getter, I suggest you first determine the most important things you want to accomplish at this stage in your life, business or career. 

Then try to install the key behaviours that must happen for you every evening that will enable you to make the most of its following morning. 

Secondly, after you have installed the right evening-to-morning habit, eliminate any suboptimal behaviour— especially during this period of your day— that could easily sabotage your efforts in the long-run.

The final and perhaps most critical element of effective bookend strategy is this: 

1} Make your decision clear.

2} Make your decision non-negotiable.

For bookend to be truly effective, your routine must not only be clear; it must be iron-clad. 

For example: instead of deciding, I will sleep and wake up early, everyday.

It should be: I will sleep and wakeup at the exact same time, every single day.

Please understand that if you are not serious about this last part, then you’re not really serious about becoming highly productive in your mornings. 

You see, highly effective people are not superhuman in anyway; they have just learned to be earnest with what most people tend to be careless about.