Episode 52: The Best Morning and Afternoon Routines for Ease and Efficiency
Transcript Episode 52
Stephanie Skryzowski
Welcome to the 100 Degrees of Entrepreneurship podcast the show for purpose driven entrepreneurs who want to get inspired to step outside of your comfort zone. Expand it to your purpose and grow your business in a big way. I’m your host, Stephanie Skryzowski, a globe trotting CFO whose mission is to empower leaders to better understand their numbers to grow their impact and their income. Let’s dive in.
Hey everybody, welcome back to 100 degrees of entrepreneurship. The podcast where we’re talking about the highs and lows of entrepreneurship and everything in between. I’m your host, Stephanie Skryzowski, and I’m excited to talk to you today about routines!
So I am an Enneagram 3, I’m a Capricorn. And I feel like all those things point to the fact that I love structure, I love routines. I’m also a mom. And so routines kind of get thrown out the window very quickly, right?
Like, just as soon as you have this, beautiful, relaxing morning routine, and you’ve done it for like a couple weeks, your kid goes through a sleep regression, and they’re up super early, or a kid gets sick. And you have to deal with that, or whatever it might be, right. I am not complaining about that.
I wouldn’t trade a perfect morning routine for my kids and all the worlds, right? So, I like to think about routines with a little bit more of a flexible mindset these days. But having a rough morning and afternoon routine have helped me so much to be able to turn my brain off at the end of the day, to wake up feeling fresh and not feeling anxious about what the day holds. And to honestly be a little bit more productive.
So I’m not going to tell you to get up at five o’clock in the morning and to spend two hours journaling and meditating and doing yoga because frankly, that is not realistic for most of us. I wish it were, I have done it before. I have been that 5AM-waker in the past, but it’s not part of my life right now.
So, I’m going to talk to you about my morning routine and my afternoon routine. And again, afternoon routines are super important too and how it has benefited me. So let’s do it. So, morning routine, get up at the same time every day, preferably early.
Now when I say early, this is relative, right? For me, that means earlier than my kids. I have used, you know, my oldest daughter is five and my youngest is two. And so throughout the last five years, I’ve had probably like 20 different morning routines.
And the ones where I am most productive are or that I really resonate with the most are when I am up before my kids. Because that just gives me a little bit of time. And sometimes it’s like an hour before my kids and sometimes it’s 15 minutes before my kids. Depending on when they wake up for the day. But getting up at the same time every day earlier than my children is really important to me.
For me, I like that time to just be alone and be quiet and just kind of start my day easing in. So sometimes if I have an extraordinary amount of time before they wake up, I might spend 10 minutes quietly journaling or reading with a cup of tea. But to be honest with you, that has not happened very much lately.
I feel like any other parents out there, do your kids have this sixth sense where they know that you’re awake. And so even if it’s a lot earlier than their normal wake time, they just have this sixth sense. And so, then they’re up and you’re like okay, there goes my morning routine for the day.
I don’t know, that happens to me and I know I am being quiet. They did not hear a thing. But somehow somehow they know it’s that sixth sense that those kiddos have. Anyway, so getting up at the same time every day, preferably early at least earlier than your kids.
The second thing is spending a little bit of time if you can quietly journaling or reading. For me, I just need that alone time in the morning. And the third thing is not touching my phone or my computer until I’m done until I have started my day kind of peacefully right? Before my kids a little bit of alone time just quietly drinking my tea. Not scrolling through Instagram or checking my emails.
Now I have to tell you, I have to actively tell myself, Stephanie, don’t touch your phone. Don’t touch your phone. Don’t touch your phone! I have all notifications off and often I need to leave it upstairs in the bedroom so I don’t touch it. Otherwise, it’s just too tempting. Right?
So not touching my phone until I’m done. And honestly, that’s kind of it. So then the girls get up and we start our whole family Morning Routine.
And a lot of times I have tried to multitask and check my emails while I’m making breakfast for the girls or start sending slack messages while I’m packing lunch for my older daughter. But that really doesn’t work for me. I have realized that I am not my best self, I’m not the best mom, and I’m not the best worker, when I’m trying to do two things at once. And so I stopped doing that.
Now, I do not get on my phone, get on my computer until the girls are off to school and our family Morning Routine is done.
So, for me, I would add not multitasking. Not trying to multitask while I’m getting the girls ready for the day.
That’s my morning routine is pretty simple right now. And I would imagine that as I go through the next phase of life, maybe when both of my girls are in elementary school, my morning routine might look a little bit different, right? And that’s okay.
I think that, you know, we see a lot, there’s a lot in the entrepreneur space, especially about morning routines and getting up at 5am and meditating. And like I said, you know, practicing yoga for an hour and a half and exercising, that’s just not possible for a lot of people in lots of different situations and phases of life. And so if that’s you right now, awesome! If that’s not you right now, it’s okay. Don’t beat yourself up about it.
The one thing I will say though, is consistency is key. And so, just try to be consistent with your morning process and you will go into the day, feeling so much lighter and just feeling a lot, a lot more ease. So that is my morning routine.
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Okay, afternoon routine. Now, do you have an afternoon routine? I wish I could see you all right now and I want to see raising hands like do you have an end of day routine. So when I say afternoon, I mean for me, the end of my workday.
So you may have an evening routine, too. But when I say afternoon, I mean end of the workday. So at the end of the workday, I do a few things really consistently. And this helps me feel like I’m closing the door to my office, both physically and figuratively.
I’m closing the door to the office and I can really be present with my family at dinner time. And you know, through the evening routine with my family. It’s funny because my office is literally like three steps away from my kitchen.
So, sometimes it’s really hard to close, turn off my work brain and turn on my mom slash family brain. Especially when there’s no like when you have a commute, right? You can kind of unwind. You listen to music. You’re physically separated from work. So it feels a lot easier to walk into your house just ready to be with your family.
But when you have literally sent your last email, and then now literally, not kidding you three steps later. I am now okay, let’s cook dinner. Let’s look in the backpacks, let’s you know play a game, let’s read some book. Let’s do all the things sometimes it’s really, really hard for me personally.
So here’s what I do. I try and not schedule meetings until the very last minute of my workday. Now, this is applicable to you, even if your workday doesn’t end at five o’clock every day, right?
If your workday ends at two o’clock, don’t schedule meetings up until 2 o’clock, schedule meetings until 1:30. So, if you like to finish your workday before the kids get off the bus and they get off the bus at three o’clock. Don’t schedule meetings until three o’clock. Right? Because you’re still going to be mentally wrapping things up as you’re going outside to get your kids off the bus.
So don’t schedule meetings up until the very last minute of your workday. So what I do in that last half hour is I do a final scan of my email. I file things away that don’t require my immediate attention. I answer things that I can do quickly. Try to get the inbox as close to zero as possible.
You all know I’m an inbox zero girl and try and just clean up the email. So I feel like I’m going into the day feeling good. And episode 11 of this podcast I shared with you four tips to manage your emails. And so maybe check that one out if email is the bane of your existence, which it sometimes feels like for me.
So the next thing I do is I update my to-do list. So you all know I’ve talked about this a lot before we use Asana at 100 degrees and so I’ll just go through Asana and kind of check off anything that got done for the day. Maybe update due dates on things to just kind of organize the rest of my week.
And so just making sure that my to do list in Asana is where it should be nice and organized. So I know that when I come into work the next day and sit down on my laptop, I know that I’m, you know, doing what I need to do. And then also you know I will say
I also honestly, I keep a paper to-do list on my desk as well just so I have a very clear focus of the top three things that need to get done for the day. So I always update that too. And finally, the last thing I do at the end of my workday is clean up my desk. And so for me, sometimes I have an external webcam and cords. So I will clean those up.
Sometimes I’ll have pulled a notebook down and be writing in that. So I’ll clean that up or post its. I just like to come into work in the morning to an empty desk where all I have on there, it’s just my laptop, and my mouse, and that’s it.
Any coffee cups, any water bottles, get that all off the desk. You’re coming in, in the morning, nice and fresh and clean. So that’s what I do. At the end of my work day, I do a final scan of the emails, I update my to-do list on my project management system, and I clean up my desk.
So I would love to know, what do you do? What do you do at the end of your day? I know you know, in the past I’ve done other things I have done like a brain dump of the day of maybe some things I have coming up that I just want to remember, sometimes I do some reflection on the day. But that’s not super consistent.
Basically, at the end of the day, I’m just cleaning up emails, cleaning up my desk and really kind of using that time to clean up my brain. So I am ready to go be mom.
So I will say there’s also evening routines. I don’t have an evening routine. If I’m being honest, my evening routine involves, you know, watching TV until I’m ready for bed at 10 o’clock and then possibly reading, sometimes reading so I am not going to tell you anything about evening routines today.
But I would love to hear if you have one. Give me some tips. So tag me over at on Instagram @stephanie.skry if you have a super awesome element of your morning or afternoon or evening routine that I should know or that we all should know I think that could be helpful for everybody.
So hope you enjoyed this episode all about productivity and consistency in your routine. I’ll talk to you soon friends!
Thanks for listening to the 100 degrees of entrepreneurship podcast. To access our show notes and bonus content, visit 100degreesconsulting.com/podcast. Make sure to snap a screenshot on your phone of this episode and tag me on instagram @stephanie.skry and I’ll be sure to share. Thanks for being here friends, and I’ll see you next time!
Transcript for Episode 52
