People love talking about their morning routines.
And I’ve got a decent morning routine too. One that sets me up for the day ahead. But I believe a quality evening routine actually has more of a positive effect on the following day than your morning routine.
A good day starts the night before.
Wind down effectively and you’ll have a great sleep and be fully rested for the day ahead.
Here’s my evening routine:
- Foam rolling 30 mins
- Reading whilst foam rolling
- Eat steak, vegetables, rice
- Listening to binaural beats/classical/jazz
- Write out goals/prep for the next day
- Cold shower right before bed
- High dose magnesium + GABA
Buying and using a foam roller is the best investment of my life.
Foam rolling is like giving yourself a deep tissue sports massage for a one-off payment of thirty bucks.
Use it every other day for the next year and you’re paying a fraction of a cent for on-demand massages.
There are plenty of studies that show the benefits of foam rolling in regards to reducing delayed onset muscle soreness (DOMS), increasing range of motion, and improving athletic ability and strength gains.
But I like it because it gives me 15-30 minutes to reset mentally at the end of the day.
Foam rolling is my meditation.
And I recommend this cheap but effective foam roller.
The way you foam roll is you apply weight and pressure to your muscles (e.g. quads) and just wait. Find a knot and wait until it starts to unravel itself.
It’s painful, but you’ll start loving it. Especially when your muscles feel all loose and nimble and you’re able to run faster the next day.
Whilst I’m foam rolling, I put on a decent pair of headphones, either the V-Modas if I’m listening to jazz or classical and wanting to appreciate the music and hear every note, or the Sennheisers if I’m listening to binaural beats and want world-class noise cancellation.
Whilst I’m doing that, I grab a book, usually fiction, and read with a pen in my hand.
Here’s what I’m reading at the moment.
The jury is out on the efficacy of binaural beats, but I find them relaxing.
And some of them have affirmations underneath, so you can even “program” how you feel for the rest of the evening, what you dream about during the night, and what kind of mood you wake up in.
At some point in the evening, I’ll cook the world’s best steak.
I attribute my productivity, mood, and cerebral performance to eating red meat every day.
This steak triggers a strong dopaminergic/serotonin response in me and makes me incredibly relaxed and content.
If it’s hot/not that cool, I’ll blast myself in the cold shower.
Cold water therapy is proven to have many benefits in regards to mood, focus, sleep, reducing inflammation, and increasing testosterone.
I’ve been doing this for years.
I write out my goals for the next day before bed.
This has two benefits:
- It clears my mind so I don’t stay awake thinking about what I need to do.
- It focuses me immediately upon waking up.
The goals are iterative.
They build upon and improve the goals and work achieved that day and earlier in the week.
The daily goals are small building blocks that a contributing towards a larger weekly goal, which contributes towards a larger monthly goal, which feeds into my yearly goal, which comes from my life goals.
I put time limits on my goals.
I’ll sketch out when I want to do each goal, ordering them based on importance and considering when my energy is at my peak, putting admin and low energy goals in my slump periods and my high performance goals upon first waking and after caffeine consumption, exercise, and walks.
I try not to put too many goals down, otherwise I get overwhelmed if I don’t complete them.
Instead, I sketch out “stretch goals” just in case I finish my main work and want to keep going.
I also set rewards for achieving certain things.
I’m more carrot that stick personally, but you need both.
Then I drug myself up.
Here’s my pre-bed supplement routine:
- 100mg of magnesium with icy water
- Read fiction for half an hour in bed
- 400mg of magnesium right before my head hits the pillow
I recommend this brand of magnesium citrate.
If I’m having trouble sleeping, I throw my favourite CBD oil and some GABA into the mix and I’m out like a light.
That’s my evening routine.
