How to make Evening Productive

Nipuni Prasadani
Sep 2, 2018 · 7 min read

First of all I want to thank everyone who gave so many good feedback to my first life hack blog post. It was so good to hear from you guys. And it was so great to hear some of you all tried to follow those steps. It’s okay that you guys feel it’s bit hard. Keep that thing going. And trust me you all will success.

So today’s post is about how to make your evening a productive one. Why only making your morning productive? Why not the evening? Evening is the time of the day we feel demotivated. We start the day with all the motivated feelings and after lunch we feel sleepy, not motivated at all and continuously checking the time and feel like time never passes. I don’t know about you guys but I have felt the same. Most of you all who reads this post may working from 8 a.m to 5 p.m. So after the lunch you have another 4 or 3 hours to go depend on the time you take the lunch. But in my case my work starts after the lunch which is worst. That’s why I had to find a way to stay motivated even after the lunch. How exactly to make the evening productive. That’s a loaded question. Since you have already started your morning with motivation, you should keep the energy going. Let’s see some tips that may help to keep the evening productive.

1. CLEAN YOUR DESK

I highly recommend you all to have lunch somewhere away from your cubical or if it’s your home then in somewhere else away from your room or office room. Eating in the same place as you work may make your working place messy and of course after the meal you won’t feel like working in the same place as well. After the meal you come to your seat and the take 5 mins from your time and clear your working place. Challenge yourself to clean your desk. There can be trash from what you ate before. And the mug you had tea or coffee may be still on the table. Take it to the lunch room and wash it properly. Do it by yourself. Your files may be messy quickly made them correctly. Wipe your desk. Take little 5 mins and clean it. By doing this daily, your place will stay clean and you don’t have to spare a separate day or some hours just to clean your room or the working place.

2. RESTART AND REFILL

It’s being a four to five or more than that hours of time that you have started working. Now it’s time to restart everything. I personally like to save and close all my work that I’m doing. And close all my browsers and restart the machine. And I like to make myself a green tea. I love to have a green tea around 4 p.m it’s perfect time to have a green tea. It’s healthier too. If you are someone who love to have coffee, it’s time to you to make a coffee for yourself. When you are making a coffee, try not to add sugar at all. Yeah I know it’s bitter but we need to stay healthy to have a productive day. So while being productive add some healthier habits to your life as well. There was a time I hate green tea just because it’s so bitter. And I never had a single coffee without three tea spoons full of sugar. My daily sugar intake was so high. Then I thought I shouldn’t be treating myself like this. I may be feeling okay now, but after 30 years what can happen. And I have a great friend who always reminds me that diabetes is not a disease that we can recover fully. Listening to that fact everyday made me think, yeah it’s time to reduce sugar. And I started it with my daily coffee cups. So my advice is to don’t add any sugar to your coffee. You can try it by reducing the amount of sugar you put to your coffee mug. I didn’t reduce little by little but I cut it off. And I feel so good about that. I had so many unhealthy habits. I have reduced so many of them. And if you all are also in a stage where you want to stop unhealthy habits, let me know I can tell you how I did it in on another post. So back to the topic. After making your self a coffee or a green tea, you should refill your water bottle. Doesn’t matter you drink a coffee or a tea, water should be always the priority.

3. TAKE A WALK

This tip is an optional one because I know most of you all can’t go out specially when you are in the office. But on weekend, you can try this out. Take yourself out for a walk. Just walk a bit with yourself. Talk to yourself, ask if everything is okay within the day. Show yourself how beautiful the surrounding as well. Well I’m a person who sees beauty within buildings and vehicles as well. So don’t complain saying you are not living in a village area or your office is in the middle of a busy city. If you want you can still find something pretty in your surrounding. You don’t have to walk for so long. Just walk for 15 minutes may be. Just to take your head out of your work. So that when you are back, you feel refreshed.

4. DON’T REGRET

At the beginning of the day I make a to-do list. So when I check my to-do list in the evening and if none of them are completed, I used to regret. I know this fact can be related to most of you all as well. Well my advice is not to worry. Worrying never brings anything to your life. Your day is not still over. And yeah you plate is full. So what you can do is pick up the easiest task from your plate and start doing that. Don’t spend your time thinking I didn't do anything productive for this day. Trust me I was there once, there were days I spend worrying that I haven’t done anything productive for the day. I couldn’t stop being worrying and start doing something. And now what I do is picking up the easiest thing from the plate and start doing that. So I don’t have to move that task to the next day’s plate. You guys may have heard about 80/20 rule. Do the 20% of tasks which are actually helps your growth. Basically assume you have 10 tasks in your to-do list, but from all of those only two tasks are actually helps your growth. So try to pick tasks from that 20%. You may not end up finishing the task that you picked, at the end of the day. But you don’t carry the whole task to the next day’s plate. Don’t you ever procrastinate things just because it’s evening and you feel like you don’t have enough time.

5. KEEP YOURSELF AWAY FROM SOCIAL MEDIA

I know most of you all keep your evening to check all your social media. Well don’t. In the morning you feel so productive because you don’t spend much time on social media. And now it’s the evening do the same. You don’t have to reply to the messages that you get, you don’t have to check your insta feed or your facebook feed. Just have some solid 4 hours to yourself again. Don’t make it less. And work on things that you have to do for the day. Yourself need some time for yourself. So don’t try to drag others drama into your life. It’s not your duty make everyone’s happy. You should make yourself happy first. So yeah, don’t check the phone and keep working on your tasks. You will feel more happier when you finish tasks which are on the plate, one by one than replying to people or checking your feed. Nothing will finish unless you start doing that. You can check on your messages on the way back home from office. And if you are driving then after having your dinner, spend some 5 to 10 mins to check on them. What I personally believe that if it’s so important, they will call you. So you don’t really have to worry. And any of the feeds were never that important.

So these are the few tips that you can follow to get a good and productive evening. Some of you may feel like these are bit selfish. It’s not call being selfish, it’s called loving yourself and make yourself priority. I want all of you a to love yourself. Because at the end of the day only person who truly remains by your side is yourself. So treat that person better. Love yourself enough, so that you don’t find your happiness in someone else’s. Hope these tips may help you to make a productive evening. Comment down below any thoughts you want to share with the community. Hope to talk to you all from my next life hack blog post. Remember you didn’t wake up in the morning to be mediocre. Live the life you love.

Nipuni Prasadani

Written by

Business Analyst | Former Software Engineer | Graduated from SLIIT | Tech Blogger | Life Hack Blogger

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