Getting Good at the Daily Grind

What Manage Your Day-to-Day taught me about creativity and routine

Welcome to Books @ Booth, a book club I’ve started with the eight apprentices working at Idea Booth this summer. If you work closely with me, you know that I believe reading is vital to personal growth and self-development. I try to read at least one book a week and am trying to pass this onto my co-workers and apprentices. Each week, we will read a book and one of my apprentices will respond with their thoughts and takeaways. This week we read Manage Your Day-to-Day, a book that inspires change and routine in individuals trying to accomplish creative tasks.

You can tell how many employees at Idea Booth have enjoyed reading Manage Your Day-to-Day over the years.

Reading Manage Your Day-to-Day is like being handed a ton of ingredients and being told to make the recipe on your own.

Now I’m usually a shitty cook, but I feel like I put together a great recipe for success. I’ve been genuinely shocked at the changes I’ve made to my daily routine in just the one week since reading this book. A lot of those cheesy self-help books say “Do this” and “Do that.” This is one of the first that says “Here are your end goals — you figure out how to get there.” It’s the only book I can remember that the lessons have stuck with me and I’ve begun to apply them to my daily life.

You’ll find that there are 4 key steps to making the recipe. First, build a rock-solid daily routine. Then, tame your skills and find focus in a distracted world. Finally, sharpen your creative mind. Yum.

One of my favorite lessons was scheduling time into your daily routine, especially in the morning, for creative work. Treat this time like you would anything else — an appointment or a meeting. Don’t allow anyone else to eat up this time, it’s more important than any meeting could be. It’s your personal time to explore, work and create.

Did you know that 82% of people in the United States think that they aren’t living up to their creative potential? Before this book, I would consider myself in that percentage. Now I’m beginning to see how that is changing. Or did you know that your daily to-do list should fit on a 3x3 Post-It note? I didn’t, and mine was a hell of a lot longer than that. I’ve consolidated to just the most important and urgent things.

Here’s a list of what I have accomplished in just one week while reading the book.

1. Established a bedtime checklist to make sure I’ve completed all the little things: do 5 minutes of ab workouts, take my vitamins, write down 3 things that made me happy that day, answer a question on Quora, etc. They’re all short, easy things I can do right before bed if I forgot during the day.
2. Woke up before work and worked out almost every morning. I ran a few miles and made it to a few classes at the gym, all before leaving the house at 8am. One morning I even did a load of laundry before work.
3. Carved out “focus blocks” during my day to focus on myself, my writing and my creative work. This is my time, and I don’t let other people touch it. They have enough of their own.
4. Meditated for at least 5 minutes every day. I’ve done love and kindness meditations, and body scan meditations. Even 5 minutes changes your mindset and I have found myself more cool, calm and collected.
5. Stopped checking my phone and email the second I wake up. Rarely is something so important that I can’t do a bit of my own work and used my energy on that before taking a look at the email notifications. Convincing yourself that the little numbers in a red bubble on your laptop screen aren’t important is so difficult, but worth it! I’ve written more in this past week than the past month.

The greatest gift Manage Your Day-to-Day will give you is letting you do it by yourself. No one’s daily routine will look just like yours, and that is what makes us different and successful in a variety of ways. The book is broken up in small chunks featuring authors from across a variety of industries. A lot of their advice is repetitive, but they each say it uniquely and, in a way, the repetition does a good job of driving the points home. If all of these successful people have done things the same way, shouldn’t you?

I’ll leave you with my favorite quote from the book: “You can do anything, but not everything” — David Allen.

Thanks for reading! Want to join our book club? Follow this publication and read along with us. Up next: Traction.

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