11 simple tools to improve your day.
Free and practical ideas with immediate benefits.
Some days we’re on top of the world, and some days we’re smothered by it.
I don’t know about you, but for me it can be difficult to distinguish what leads to those good days and bad days. We want life to boil down to corollaries - inputs and outputs.
But alas, life - and our minds - are complex. There isn’t a playbook for perfect days, no matter how many articles and books are written on the topic.
That doesn’t mean we’re helpless, however.
There are tools we can implement that reliably lead to positive outcomes. There are things we can do to shift our mindset, which in turn shifts our day. There are actions we can take to muffle the noise and come back to center.
What follows are my 11 favorite tools to improve my days. And many of them have become the infrastructure to my daily cadence, which allows me to be proactive with the topic-at-hand, instead of just reacting to my days as they unfold.
Breathe. Control your breath, and you control your state of being. That’s not just my opinion. That’s science. Life begins and ends with the breath. Read Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art. Download the Wim Hof app and do a guided breathing session. Look up breath work videos on YouTube and do one that looks interesting. Do 10 minutes of box breathing or resonance breathing. Breath work, like meditation, is a personal journey. Just get started and see where it takes you.
Sweep your mind. When we’re overwhelmed, one of the best things we can do is get everything out of our heads and onto paper. Take out a notebook and write down everything that has your attention - things you need to do at work, things you need to do at home, people you need to get back to, people you’re waiting on responses from, projects, decisions that need to be made. Just start writing and get anything that has your attention out from between your ears, and onto paper where you can actually do something with it. Your mind will thank you.
Plan your day. Sometimes our stress derives from not knowing what to do next, and not having a grasp over what’s ahead. Grab a piece of paper and write down hourly blocks for your day. Do it for the entire week if you’re up for it. Organize your day or week with your most important work to get done, and anything else that’s important to you - workouts, walks, family time. When you plan your day or week, you’re freeing your mind from thinking about what you could be doing, and instead just executing on what you should be doing.
Take a cold shower. This is the quickest way I know of to change your state. Yes, it’s cold. Yes, it can be hard for about 30 seconds. But on the other side is clarity and calm. Throw your shower on the coldest setting and stay in it for 3 minutes. If you do this for a few days in a row, my guess is you’ll start *wanting* to do it because the effects are so positive and visceral.
Take action. We are our own worst enemy when it comes to productivity and procrastination. If we’re in a state where our minds want to delay the task at hand, one of the best things we can do is take the smallest action possible. Open the draft email. Create the new document. Pull up your list of people to call or email. If you take the smallest action possible, the next action becomes easier, and the pattern repeats. A long run starts with a single step, and overcoming procrastination is no different. The only path through it is via that first step.
Find the good. We all have different realities and different struggles. But we also all have the ability to find the good things within those realities and struggles. Take a few minutes to give voice to the things that you’re grateful for. Write them down in a notebook, or just give them your full concentration during that cold shower that’s turning your day around. But don’t just write them down or think about it. Give them life. *Feel* the gratitude and you’re literally changing your state from the inside out with your mind alone.
Take a walk. I likely don’t need to convince you of this, and have written about it many times before. Walking gets your body moving. Walking helps you clear the mental clutter. Walking sparks creativity. Walking improves your health. Walking exposes you to sunlight, fresh air, and nature. Again, it’s not opinion, it’s science. And it’s right outside your door.
Thank someone. Send a text. Write an email. Call a friend. Slack a coworker. Thanking someone increases gratitude and humility, both of which squeeze out so many of the negative states that we wrestle with.
Cut the noise. Delete Instagram for a few days. Log out of LinkedIn. Take a digital detox for a week. Catch yourself in the moments of habitual and compulsive scrolling. If you can catch yourself, you can stop yourself. When we temporarily remove these things from our life, we take our power back from them, and we reduce the persistent hum of noise that they create.
Lean on extrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation > extrinsic motivation. But that doesn’t mean that extrinsic motivation can’t be useful. When you’re trying to turn your day around, it’s fair to assume that your intrinsic motivation is waning. Replace the noise you cut out above with ideas and inspiration that you help you shift your mindset. Throw on your favorite health podcast. Listen to someone that is inherently calming. Deep dive on a topic you don’t know much about. The best podcasters and teachers bring a level of energy to their work that will elevate your own energy by proxy.
Put things in perspective. Things can always be worse. And I don’t throw that out flippantly. If you’re reading this, it means there are conditions in this world that billions of people live within that we cannot even comprehend. That doesn’t mean our problems aren’t valid or real. It means that in order to take the weight off of those problems and view them in their proper context, we have to zoom out. We can appreciate and empathize with the struggles of others, particularly those that have it materially worse than we do. And that perspective is what allows us to move through our own struggles with a measure of grace and gratitude.
✌️ and ❤️,
Adam Griffin
Certified High Performance Coach™
👉 Forward Coaching