Early Morning E-mails And Late Night Musings — My Essential Daily Checklist

By Dan Smith

Every day I get the three Help A Reporter Out (HARO) e-mails landing in my inbox.

Depending on how busy I am depends on how many of them I check and in how much depth, but I tend to always have a quick flick through at least one of them every day.

When I was skimming through one the other day, I noticed someone was asking for entrepreneurs to contact them regarding any daily rituals that they have and how they’ve helped their business develop.

I initially thought that I didn’t have any real daily rituals, but then that thought developed into one where I was thinking that OK, I do do some things on a daily basis, but that’s just the nature of the work, right?

Well, that thought soon developed further and I realised that in fact I have five daily rituals that I always carry out.

Some are related to freelance writing directly whilst others are just things I do as part of my working day, but they could all be classed as daily rituals to some degree.

I check my e-mails before anything else

Getting an iPhone has been both the best and worst business decision I’ve made in a long time.

It’s the worst decision because any spare time I get isn’t often spent on work, but playing on apps (have you tried Angry Birds or Cut The Rope?!), yet it’s the best because it allows me to check my e-mail quickly and easily when I’m still in bed and my laptop isn’t to hand.

I find that if I can have a quick look through my e-mails before I do anything else, I can think about my replies in more depth when I’m relaxed whilst, for example, in the shower, than rushing them when I’m steeped in work and busier later on in the day.

I take a proper lunch break

Up until a few months back, I used to work right through my lunch. I’d stop for a few minutes to make a sandwich and a drink and maybe check the news headlines, but I’d be back working, whilst eating, within10 or 15 minutes.

I found out before the summer that if I take a full 30 to 60 minutes for my lunch, however, I come back feeling a lot more refreshed and ready to tackle my workload throughout the entire afternoon, rather than thinking things were starting to drag an hour or two after my lunch, as was the case previously.

I always check the same few blogs in the afternoon

Although I tend to check probably a dozen fantastic blogs on a somewhat regular basis, there’s three or four that I check every day, without fail, including Get Paid To Write Online.

I’m not sure whether it’s because I feel part of the community more at those blogs or the contributors provide higher quality and more interesting content, but there haven’t been many days over the past few months where I haven’t spent at least 30 minutes reading through the same three or four blogs each day to see what’s new.

I don’t stop working until I’ve completed my required amount of work for that day

At the start of the month, I look at what work I have on for the coming four weeks and divide it up into equal amounts throughout the week, so that I know how much work I have to do each day.

At the start of every week, I then reevaluate this daily work schedule and either increase it or decrease it depending on whether I’ve taken on any new projects or I’m ahead of schedule.

Then, unless in exceptional circumstances, I don’t stop working Monday through to Friday until I’ve got the individual day’s work complete, whether that means staying up until 1am or not.

The reason I do this is that I try my hardest to keep my weekends free from work and personally, I’d rather work extensively during the week so that I can have the weekends off in full.

However, I do have one rule — I only work until 8pm on a Friday night. I’ve usually finished work before then, but if not, I take whatever work is left forward into the following week’s schedule or if possible, I take some time out over the weekend and complete it.

I spend some time on the computer before I go to bed

After I’ve got all of my work completed for the day, I tend to spend a few minutes just having a browse about the internet. Most of the time I end up on a freelance writing or business development blog of some sort and I’m not entirely sure why it happens, but I find that I start to get some random — but interesting — ideas and thoughts.

I don’t act upon them and don’t look into them further, I just open up a blank Notepad document or e-mail and write the thoughts down. I then e-mail them to myself, close my computer down and start again with my first daily ritual after a good night’s sleep.

Do you have any rituals that you carry out on a daily basis? I personally feel that everything I do on a daily basis makes everything run smoother — do you feel the same or do you think that they actually hamper your progress and development?

Image: thesaint (stock.xchng)