Although when we think of successful people we start to think at fame, wealth, and high social status, in its most simplistic form, success is the accomplishment of an aim or purpose. This is something that we have to keep in mind when we talk about success because we tend to wrongly label successful people by the numbers of figures in their bank account or Instagram followers. And yes, all the big names out there (Tesla, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, etc…) have both money and followers, the underlying common denominators that took them where they are are passion, hard work, sacrifice, time and patience.

We all see successful people as beautiful, tasty cakes, a product of a recipe that shaped them as such, and we want to follow the same recipe that made them successful. That’s why we get hooked up when we see “The 5 habits of Successful People”, because we hope that by literally and religiously following those steps we will become as successful in life as they are.

But the reality is, we can be successful in our own ways, without the freezing cold showers first thing in the morning, or waking up at 4:50am everyday, as we read and watch everywhere on the web.

Don’t Wake Up at stupid o’clock in the morning.

Why? Because if you are 28 years old and you have been having the same routine for the last 10 years waking up at 8:30 in the morning, it is highly unlikely that you will find the motivation to implement this in your routine for years on end. It might last from less than a week to 10 days and than it will start to fade off.

We have all read articles and watched inspiring Youtube videos where the first thing they mention is to wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning (or similar times) in order to be a successful person in life.

I have tried several times over the years to implement this habit inside my routine, and I have systematically failed every single time because I am not a 5:00 am kind of person. If anything it led me to believe that I wasn’t made to be successful because of my failure to wake up at 5:00 am.

If you are a morning person and you naturally wake up early, well… good for you. If you are more of a late-morning person than guess what… it is totally fine and you won’t be less successful than the early bird.

There is an amazing book, which I highly recommend you to read/listen, called “Why We Sleep” by Dr Matthew Walker, a scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology. In his book, he states that there are two kinds of people: the early birds, people who naturally wake up early in the morning, and the night owls, people who go to bed late at night and wake up later in the morning. This reveals that our sleep schedule is not just a personal preference but there is an innate, biological predisposition that also has a genetic component. Early riser find their productivity peak in the morning whereas night owls find their productivity peak in the early afternoon and evenings. It is hard to be a night owl in a society that wants you to be an early riser, because they have to fight against their innate sleep timing in order to fit in, and this can heavily affect how you sleep, how you eat, your mood and health.

In summary, it is not waking up stupidly early that will make you successful, but what you will do from the time you open up your eyes and get out of bed.

Start with the end

Whatever is the project you are working on, try to start with the end. Having in mind what you want your final product to be like gives you the possibility to be a lot more efficient when you actually work to make it. This is because having your eyes fixed on your final product will help you to determine what tools and techniques you will need in order to achieve it. It also gives you the right positive mindset to start and work on it, because in that case we become goal oriented, and it will make less frustrating working on the tedious staff that we need to work on in order to achieve our goal.

Look forward to fail

To me this sentence is equal to “to look forward to learn”. Failing is unpleasant, and no one wants to. It gives a feeling of not being able to achieve something, and that we worked hard for nothing. The truth is that failing is a crucial part of the learning process, we get better and better each time we fail. The most vicious loop you can fall into is failing and do the same things that brought you to fail all over again. We have to be mindful every time we fail, process and acknowledge the failure and retrospectively look at our work spotting potential flaws and reflecting what we could have done better or differently. So, in essence, you either succeed or learn, you never truly fail.

Plan your day the night before

Planning your day the night before is an effective time-management skill that allows you to be more organized during the day.

Having a list of things to do gives us the opportunity to waste less time in actually thinking what we need to do during the day. There is the temptation to be carried away by the enthusiasm of being productive the day after, and this takes us to write down way too many tasks on our list, probably even big tasks that require a lot of time and energy in order to give us the satisfaction to cross them out. So, there my be the risk that you will be left with way too many unchecked things in your list at the end of the day, and this can give you a feeling of “I haven’t done enough”. So here’s my suggestion, write down only a few tasks that you think are realistically achievable and estimate the right time you think you will need in order to complete them, and most importantly prioritize them. Leave the most challenging ones to the time of the day where you think you have your productivity peak, but off course this will then greatly depend on your work and life schedule.

Make your bed

Although I might sound like your mom now, this is a take-home message I have actually taken from the homonymous book “Make your bed” by William H. McRaven. It might sound like a simple task, and it certainly is, but making your bed as soon as you wake up will actually let you start the day with your first accomplishment, your brain will start to release endorphins because if there is one thing the brain loves is to have that feeling of accomplishment after completing a task this will accoany all the way through the night time when you go back to nicely done bed.

Prefer quality over quantity

This is quite self-explanatory, but preferring quality over quantity is better in the long term. Although preferring quantity can somehow gives a sense of satisfaction as we have a feeling that we achieved more (with little effort) and we have been very productive. But if you think at the meaning of the word productivity: “the effectiveness of productive effort”, you will soon realize that it is better to focus on three tasks and do them well, as opposed to doing ten tasks superficially and with the mindset of “I just want to get rid of this task so I can cross it out from my list”, with the risk of actually having to make them again in the future.