“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.
