Let me know if your mornings sound like this: You wake up a little late, rush around to get ready, swear up and down you’re forgetting something, grab your keys and run out the door.

Once you get to work, you’re a chaotic mess and already overwhelmed before you’ve even gotten to your desk. You’re burned out and can’t focus.

If this sounds familiar, you’re in good company.

The remedy?

Every good day starts with a great night. It’s only when you’re rested and you’ve tied up all of your loose ends from the prior day that you can really tackle each new day.

So let’s look at some evening routine habits that you can adopt to end your day that will set you up for a better tomorrow.

Establish a “Shut Down” Ritual

You know when you try to turn your computer off and you have a lot of tabs and programs running, and you get a ton of pop-ups asking if you’re sure you want to exit? Think of your brain in this same way. You can’t just shut it down with a simple click because it will still be trying to run programs and find solutions to ongoing issues.

Your “shut down” ritual should take about 5 or 10 minutes, and once you’re finished, you will have a grasp on what you got accomplished that day and what needs to be done the next so you can defer all work-related issues until the next day.

Pack for the Next Day

Packing up the night before is like doing your future self a favor – and you will thank yourself for it. Sure, it doesn’t take long to throw some leftovers from the fridge into your lunchbox in the morning, but just grabbing the lunchbox itself and running out of the door is even faster. And, if you prepare yourself as much as possible, the time will add up and your mornings will be a breeze.

What can you take off your plate in the morning? If you go to the gym after work, pack your gym bag (and even put it in your car), set your clothes out for work, pack your lunch (and your kids’ lunches and school supplies as well), and set the coffee maker on a timer so it starts brewing as soon as you wake up.

Taking these steps will decrease your chances of forgetting something the next day, and it will prevent you from experiencing decision fatigue before you even get to work. Waking up will feel less like a chore if you’ve set yourself up the night before.

Spend Time with Your Loved Ones

It’s easy to get so lost in planning and executing that you forget to take a look at the bigger picture of life and enjoy what your success is actually doing for you. Remember, you’re supposed to work to live, not live to work.

Set aside time every night to spend with your family and friends. Sit down to dinner, help your kids with their homework, play a game with loved ones, participate and be present in whatever those you care about do at night. Reward yourself with this luxury and it will pay off in the long run when you look back on your life.

Get a Full Night's Sleep

You’re probably thinking that’s easier said than done, but once you get into the routine of it, it’s simple to do.

Not only is sleep important for our daily functioning, it has many systemic health benefits. Sleep helps control metabolism and weight, promotes stable moods, helps prevent cardiovascular diseases, boosts our immune system/function, increases knowledge retention, and helps us with long and short-term memory. Without exercising healthy sleep hygiene, your energy during the day can go downhill, taking your productivity, motivation, and emotions along with it.

Clean and Organize

Waking up to laundry on the floor and dishes in the sink will only start your day off by facing obstacles. However, if you spend 20 minutes every night doing a quick tidy-up ritual, you will find your morning much easier to navigate as you’re trying to get out of the door. By putting things away, you will avoid the slippery slope of living in a disaster area and feeling distracted in the morning.

What’s more, walking into a frenzied work environment first thing in the morning sets your day up for chaos. Clear your work space before closing up for the day to avoid being confronted with clutter that isn’t relevant to the work you’re doing the next day. Working and living in an organized environment is an absolute must if you want to feel in control of your life.

Use the 10-3-2-1-0 Formula

This simple technique will help you wake up feeling rested so you can get more done in the early hours of the morning. Not only will you get to bed earlier by following this formula, you will sleep better as well.

10 hours before bed: No more caffeine. It takes about 10 hours for your body to eliminate itself of caffeine and get rid of its stimulatory effects.

3 hours before bed: Stop consuming food and alcohol. Finishing your meals and alcohol three hours before bed will help prevent you from experiencing heartburn, which can interrupt your sleep. While alcohol might make you tired at first, it disturbs your natural sleep cycle and can rob you of valuable deep sleep.

2 hours before bed: Stop working. Complete your “shut down” ritual at least two hours before bed so you can have uninterrupted time with your family and put work problems aside.

1 hour before bed: Turn off all screens including your phone, TV, and laptop. Shut down your electronics an hour before bed because the blue light will disturb your sleep. You can read instead, meditate, take a bath, or spend time talking with your spouse.

0: The number of times you hit “snooze” in the morning. Finally, don’t give into the temptation to hit the snooze button in the morning. Doing so will make you late for your planned day and make your morning routine rushed. Plus, going back to sleep can ultimately make you wake up even more tired than you would have been if you just got up as planned.

Practice Gratitude

The word gratitude is derived from the Latin word gratia, which means grace, graciousness, or gratefulness (depending on the context). In some ways gratitude encompasses all of these meanings. Gratitude is a thankful appreciation for what an individual receives, whether tangible or intangible. With gratitude, people acknowledge the goodness in their lives. In the process, people usually recognize that the source of that goodness lies at least partially outside themselves. As a result, gratitude also helps people connect to something larger than themselves as individuals — whether to other people, nature, or a higher power.

Gratitude helps people refocus on what they have instead of what they lack. And, although it may feel contrived at first, this mental state grows stronger with use and practice. Gratitude helps you feel more positive emotions, relish good experiences, improve health, deal with adversity, and build strong relationships.

Read

You might assume that in order to be a great achiever, you need to focus your reading on business or self-improvement books. And while continuous learning is important, focusing on these things right before bed will get your wheels turning and your mind moving, which can prevent you from being able to sleep.

You may end up staying awake, ruminating over new ideas you want to try, which is not a great beginning to a healthy night’s sleep.

Instead, read a fiction book or a biography that allows you to escape into someone else’s world. Read a book that is relaxing – even if it has an educational twist to it. This will keep you focused on the story you’re reading instead of taking your mind to the variety of things you need to do to improve your life.

Reading a relaxing book for 30 minutes before turning off the lights will help you fall asleep quickly and wake up feeling creative and rested.

Practice Something You Enjoy

If you have a hobby you enjoy, this may be the time to engage in that. Or maybe you’re working on a project that will move you closer to achieving your dreams, or you want to focus on learning a new skill. The evenings are a great time to use to try out new experiences or improve upon your current abilities.

Instead of passively sitting around on the couch, engage in something that is meaningful to you in some way, whether that’s learning a new language, practicing playing an instrument, creating art, or working on a collection. Spending time doing things you enjoy will impact your daily attitude, which can increase your productivity. So spend 30 minutes pursuing something meaningful to you at night, and you will notice a big difference in your overall well-being and sense of self-worth.

Reflect

You probably spend a lot of time thinking about the future, and maybe significantly less time reflecting on where you’ve been. And while it’s good to focus on moving forward instead of regretting past mistakes, this tendency also prevents people from doing some solid reflection.

Take some time every night to reflect on your day, thinking about what went well and what could have gone better. Did you face any unexpected challenges? If so, how did you handle them? How might you handle similar situations in the future? What can you do to prevent the problem from happening again?

Doing some reflection at night will help you gain insight into your performance and increase your self-awareness regarding your ability to problem-solve. With this insight, you can make those small improvements that are needed to end up with major results in the long run.

Think of One Thing That Excites You About Tomorrow

This is an effective and powerful way to ensure you will get up earlier than necessary and jumpstart your day.

Thinking about the things that tomorrow could bring – seizing new opportunities, seeing more results, meeting new people, making new decisions – will feel both motivating and empowering. Having these things at the front of your mind will inspire you to jump out of bed when the time comes.

Acceptance

Accept your day for what it was, no matter how it went. Remind yourself that you did your best and that is something you can feel good about. There’s nothing you can change about today – you made all of the best decisions that you could at the time with the information you had.

Don’t carry any burdens of the day with you into tomorrow because this will only keep you living in the past. If necessary, you can choose to be twice as productive tomorrow by making accepting and letting go one of your evening routine habits.

It can be hard to build routines into your life. But with a little discipline, sticking to these routines will set you up for success.

The good thing about routines and habits is the more you practice them, the more natural they become. They eventually become so ingrained in your day that it’s harder to not do them.

So end your day on purpose and stick with it. You will find your days to be much more productive when you have a high-quality night.