Here’s a helpful productivity tip I’ve been passing on to friends and co-workers. 

After 7 or 8 hours of writing, planning, strategizing and what-have-you, the crunchy peanut butter brain you started with at 10 a.m. now resembles jelly, and a grand total of ZERO good thoughts are coming out.

       |  Instead of beating yourself up about your lack of productivity, or    
       |  letting monkey mind take over, why not start tomorrow today? 

Try spending 30-45 minutes of your last hour in the office drafting emails that relate to current projects. For example, you’ve got to send someone a pitch deck at 11 a.m. the next day. Or, you’ve got to remind your team about a meeting happening later in the afternoon. 

You can pre-write emails and add attachments in your inbox, or if you’re a Wunderlist power user like I am, you can use the pullout drawers from to-do items to compose your messages, then copy/paste them into messages the next day. You might even like setting reminders for the time of day you’ll send out those messages, too. 

Instead of wasting precious “focus energy” tomorrow morning, you’ll be ready to send, sit down with a clear mind, and do the kind of deep thinking that comes when all the to-do items and inbox chaos is off your mind. 

For me, it’s a great way to end the day by reflecting on what’s done and projecting on what’s next.