7 Daily Habits of Successful People (You Don’t Want To Miss This)

Success is not something that you can achieve within a short period of time. It is not your single decision and action that leads you to great success, it is your habits.

You cannot lose weight nor have a slim body if you go to the gym just once. You cannot build a successful business if you just work on it for only a day.

Success is something that you achieve through making the right decision and taking the right action, day in and day out, day after day, until the moment you reach the tipping point.

It is the accumulation of small successes that will give you huge success over time. And the small successes can be accomplished through your daily decision and action you take.

Aristotle once said this, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Take control of your habits, for they will take control of your life.

If you want to be successful, just adopt the success habits that success will come to you.

Your habits can make you or break you, if you don’t manage them, they will manage you. Thus, if you adopted bad habits, they will break you.

Just like what Vince Lombardi said, “Winning is a habit. Unfortunately, so does losing.”

So are you ready to take control of your life by learning and adopting the daily habits of successful people.

1. Wake Up Early

This is one of the most common and the most mentioned habit of most successful people.

Of course, I’m not saying that ALL the successful people wake up early. There are some successful people who prefer to be a night owl than a morning bird.

However, the majority of the successful people prefer to wake up early. In fact they love to wake up early to start their day.

Talking about successful people wake up early, do you know that there is even a book written about this habit?

A must-read book by Laura Vanderkam called “What The Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast”.

It is a very interesting book about morning routines of most successful people out there.

You can see that great people such as Neha Sampat, the CEO of digital tech solutions provider of Built.co, wakes up at 5am almost every morning including his weekends.

Richard Branson in his blog said that he tries to wake up at 5am no matter where he is around the world…

“No matter where I am in the world, I try to routinely wake up at around 5am. By rising early, I’m able to do some exercise and spend time with my family, which puts me in a great mind frame before getting down to business.”

It is said that almost 90% of the CEOs of big companies wake up before 6am each morning.

So Why Do You Need to Wake Up Early?

Do you know that if you wake up 2 hours earlier each day, you will be able to have an extra 730 hours a year, which is equivalent to having an additional month in a year?

You will be living 13 months year while, moving faster and earlier than most ordinary people out there.

Furthermore, you will have you own UNDISTURBED time when it is early in the morning. Nobody will call you since it is early morning and most people are still sleeping.

This is when most successful people spend time preparing themselves for the day. They workout, they exercise, they meditate, they read a book, they get themselves ready to start great.

Not everyone is an early riser. If you can’t get up early, it doesn’t mean that you can’t achieve the same success results like most of the successful people I mentioned here.

And you don’t really have to make drastic change to get up early. All you need to do is to train yourself to wake up 15 minutes earlier each day.

Try it for about a week or two, and then change your routine again to wake up another 15 minutes earlier. This will make your body to slowly adapt to the changes that you make.

No matter whether you are a night owl or the early bird, I challenge you to try to get up as early as possible to get a feel of the freshness of the wee hours.

And make it a habit to rise early. Remember, “You don’t need to be great to start; you just need to start to be great.”

Of course, if you have tried out for some time and you really cannot take it, you may switch back to your old habit then.

2. Exercise and Workout

If you are wondering why do most successful people wake up so early, here’s the answer, they exercise and workout.

It seems that people who achieved outstanding feat in life devote their time to exercising and working out.

When you exercise, you stretch your body muscle. Your blood stream will flow faster through your tissues and you feel ‘fresh’.

Studies have shown that after you workout and sweat, your body will the chemical called endorphins that will make you feel happy.

Not only that, you will be able to reduce your stress level and create the sense of happiness deep within you.

The author of The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari, Robin Sharma, introduces the second wind workout in his coaching program.

He suggested people to workout twice a day. Once in the morning after we wake up, and once in the early evening after the office hour.

You don’t really need to go for heavy workout session until you feel tired and no energy after the session. You just need to exercise and make your body sweat.

Jogging is a good choice. That is why a lot of the successful people will go for jogging early in the morning.

Do You Know That Exercise And Workout Can Make You Productive?

Do you know that during an interview, people asked Richard Branson what is his productivity tips, and he simply answered, “I workout.”

Exercising can recharge your body and refresh your mind. This is why people become more productive after they workout.

Your blood flow to your brain will increase when you exercise. It will boost your alertness and increase your energy level.

Would you feel sleepy when working out? I don’t think so. You will feel sleepy if you sit in front of the computer staring at the screen the whole day.

You may feel sleepy if you just sit and read books for hours. You will feel sleepy if you have nothing to do.

However, you will never feel sleepy when you are working out. You move your body and your muscle while exercising, which make you alert and energetic.

This is why exercise is one of the most underrated tips to productivity.

Check it out yourself and adopt this as your daily habit. You will see how it can powerfully affect your life.

3. Plan Your Day Ahead

This is a very common habit that most people never bother, but those who did this, they are able to achieve much more in life.

Have you ever gone through a day where everything is out of your expectation?

You wake up late because you set the wrong alarm. And then you rush to the bathroom and you hit your leg on the bedside. You feel angry and quickly get into the bathroom to get yourself prepared.

You don’t have time to get breakfast because you’re late. So you rush to your car and found that you left your car key in the house. You get back in and grab the key.

While on the road, it is jam now because you’re late. When you reach your office, everyone is busy working and you have no idea where to start. Suddenly your boss asks for meeting for the whole morning.

You’re hungry, you’re blurred, you’re tired and you have no idea how to go through the rest of your day.

Can you relate? This is exactly what will happen if you go through your day without planning, most of the time.

Proactive VS Reactive

When you plan for your day, you know exactly what you need to do and you know when to execute it. You are in the proactive mood and you get things done.

On the other hand, if you go through your day without planning, you will have no idea what to do. You will be in reactive mood and you react to things that happen to you.

This is why almost all the successful people are proactive in getting things done. They know what they need to do and they become more productive because of this.

When you have no idea what to do and your colleague comes to you ask you to go for a drink, most people will just say yes, would you?

I’m not saying that you can’t relax or take a break. All I’m trying to say is that when you know what need to get done, you will understand which is the priority, to go for a drink or do your work first? It is your choice.

Brian Tracy said that, “Writing a list clarifies your thinking and goals. Writing down a list forces you to think at a higher level.”

You become a visionary when you write down a list. You try to pre-plan what is going to happen to you in the future and you envision yourself doing it.

The nutrition and weight-loss company, Medifast, and the CEO, Michael MacDonald, mentioned that at the end of each business day, he would take some time to regroup and think about the most important items to be done next day.

If all the big companies and successful people plan their day the day before, don’t you think that you should do the same?

So starting from now on, plan for your day. Have your daily plan, weekly plan, monthly plan and of course, your yearly goals and targets.

4. Schedule Time For Family

Some people think that this is just not related to success, and I can tell you that you are wrong if you think it this way.

In fact, connecting with your family members and people that you love is one of the most underestimated habits for success.

When you know that you have a great family waiting for you at home, do you think you can do better at work? Of course!

You know that you have a loving family that will support you no matter what. You don’t have to worry about dinner because your wife will handle for you. You can then put in your 100% concentration into your business and your work.

There is a saying, behind every successful man, there is a woman. Sounds quite true.

The CEO of Veeam, Ratmir Timashev, said that he made it a priority to spend 2 hours a day with his children. It helps him to recharge his batteries, think more creatively and also gives him the daily reminder why he works so hard.

We just can’t live alone in this planet. We need to connect to others to survive and to thrive.

This is especially true if you are running your own business. Can you do your business without a team and without customers? You just can’t.

The Need To Connect

People who have great friends and family tend to live and go through their day happier.

Like what Ratmir Timashev mentioned above, the time he spent with his children actually recharge him and makes him more creative and productive.

The same goes for Richard Branson; he spends a lot of his time with his family…

“What are you going to spend time doing this Easter? I’m fortunate to be able to spend it surrounded by family and friends. It’s important to get time to relax, recuperate, and enjoy quality time with loved ones.” – Richard Branson

It is said that spending time with people you love is just like putting money into your investment account. One will grow your wealth and the other will grow you as person.

When you feel loved, connected, recharged and your love ones are always there for you, there’s nothing can stop you. You can then focus better and accomplish more in other areas of your life.

5. Do The First thing First

All the successful people understand what is important to them and they do it first.

The success habit you need to adopt here is to do what is important to you first. And to explain this, you have to understand the Pareto 80/20 rule.

It is said that 20% of your work will produce 80% of the result. And the other 80% of your work will only amount to 20% of your work.

The question now becomes, are you working on the 20% or the 80%?

Ordinary people spend time working on 80% of the work that will give them 20% of the result.

Successful people, on the other hand, focus in doing what is important and what will yield them the most result.

If you think that you have no choice but to do all the mundane and tedious tasks such as accounting and filing, you won’t be getting too far from what you do.

This is because we all have 24 hours a day. And in order to get more done, we have to focus in doing what is important to us; things that will give us the most result.

This is why we hire staffs such as admin and accountants to do the work. So that we can free up our time and concentrate on other work that will give us the most outcome.

Learn To Eat The Biggest and Ugliest Frog First

According to Brian Tracy’s book, Eat That Frog, he suggested people to do their most important and biggest task the first thing once we started our day.

Therefore, you have to identify what is most important to you. As a blogger, creating quality content is my number one priority as of now. So I will put in all my energy and focus in creating quality articles the first thing every morning.

Most people spend time learning, spend time checking their emails, spend time reading other people’s blogs, spend time checking their website analytics and spend time getting updates from Facebook.

These are important tasks, but they should not get your full attention the first thing in the morning (if you clarify them not as your priority).

Thus, you have to understand what work will give you the most result. So that you can put your business’ focuses there.

And one more thing, once you get the most important and most result-oriented task done, you will feel lighter and satisfied.

This will give you more confidence to go through the rest of your day. If you can eat the biggest and ugliest frog, what’s so difficult in eating the rest of the smaller and prettier frogs, right?

So if you want to be productive, get the most out of your day by doing the most result-yielding and most important task the first thing in the morning.

Your successes will build on and create more successes over the day.

6. Network With The Team

There is a saying, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

Networking with your team is one of the most important thing you need to do from time to time.

A business cannot grow if it doesn’t have a strong team. A company will stay stagnant or go down if the people who are part of the team don’t support each other.

Study the successes of all the businesses and companies out there and you will see that the great leaders dedicate their successes to having a strong and great team.

Here’s what Vikram Aggarwal, the CEO of EnergySage said about networking with the team:

“Team culture is critical in the American service economy. The only way to make sure that your team is working together at an optimal level is to make sure that you talk both formally and informally with your team.”

We simply cannot thrive alone. Even if your team is small, it doesn’t matter. Build the habit of working on your team spirit now. And when your team grow bigger, you will have no problem creating the supportive and positive culture you want.

Do you know that Apple’s founder Steve Jobs has got Steve Wozniak with him when Jobs first started Apple?

Even when launching the iPod that changes the whole music industry, Steve Jobs has got Jony Ive with him.

How about Walt Disney? Walt Disney was not alone either. He has got his brother, Roy Disney with him as the co-founder of the company.

Google has got Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Microsoft got Bill Gates and Paul Allen, HP got Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard, and the list goes on.

You Don’t Have To Wait To Build A Team

Listen, if you are alone and don’t have a team now, it doesn’t matter. All you need to do is to just get it started.

You don’t really have to wait to have a perfect team to start. They will somehow come to you, as like fate has determined that you and your team’s destinies are connected somewhere.

If you watched movies, you will notice that the hero or heroine will just move on and eventually they stumbled with their partners and formed a team along the journey.

You just need to start and the best team will come to you.

Hence, spend time growing and nurture your team from now on. Make it a must-do and build your team spirit from time to time.

7. Take Time To Recharge

How often do you slow down, stop and recharge yourself?

Doing so does not actually ‘slow’ you down, in fact it moves you even faster and further.

Successful people understand that if they continue to stay in the office the whole day, they will ‘stuck’ in it. Their productivity and their creativity will decrease.

Thus, they will spend time to recharge.

Studies showed that taking time off will increase your productivity and hence improve your chances at succeeding in your career and business.

Reading is one of the most common way people relax and recharge. Bob Iger, the Disney CEO gets up at 4:30am everyday to read. Bill Gates, Mack Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Richard Branson, Anthony Robbins and Jack Canfield all devote their time for reading everyday too.

Besides reading, some will spend time with meditation. The CEO of Sq1, Ernie Capobianco, spends 20 minutes upon waking and 20 minutes before sleeping for meditation.

He said that meditation has helps him maintain a level of mindfulness that enables moment-to-moment awareness.

Steve Jobs did the same thing and he would spend time with meditation as well. John Assaraf, author of the book, Having It All and one of the featured authors in The Secret, highly suggested meditation as the way to improve the quality of our lives.

Put aside reading and meditation, there many other ways you can recharge yourself. Exercise is one of them. Spending quality time with your family is one of them. Going for a short retreat or getaway is one of them. Walking in the woods, jogging, hitting the gym, swimming, and even spend time doing nothing by the beach are great ways to recharge yourself.

The activities that you choose to get recharge don’t really matter. The most important thing here is that you get to fully recharge and get away from what is on your hand.

This allows you to stay away and let your subconscious mind get to work. It is said that most of the creative solutions come when we don’t focus on the problem.

So spend time to get recharge. Read books everyday and stay together with the people you love. Get away from your work from time to time.

You rest because you want to go further. Success is a long journey and you must take rest from one place to another.

The Conclusion

These are the 7 daily habits of successful people. It is definitely not easy to adopt all of them in one time.

And you have to remember that creating the success you want is all about adopting the success habits. This is because your habits will shape your life.

It is what we repeatedly do, that make us who we are. So as long as you have the right and empowering habits with you, you will never go wrong.

Put in the effort now and grow these 7 habits with you from today onward. Success will eventually come to you.