Most people feel that feeling tired and drained after work is normal and that evenings are always unproductive, but that is not true. I've been a learning and productivity coach for the past 13 years, and I've helped over 30,000 people triple their productivity using research-based methods. So, in this video, I'm going to share seven specific strategies that I've used to stop wasting my evenings and transform that time into something that is both productive and fulfilling.
So starting with strategy number one, calibrate your natural energy levels. One of the most shocking discoveries for myself was realizing that the constant feeling of tiredness is not actually normal. Starting from when I was in late high school, uh going through medical school, running a business on the side, working as a doctor, during that entire period of time, like 15 years, I was always tired.
Like every single day, I wanted to take a nap. Every morning I'm waking up feeling like I just want to go back to sleep. And it's only when I quit being a medical doctor and then I had full control over my schedule did I realize that when I do give myself enough sleep and enough rest in recovery, I'm actually very rested.
This is a really important realization for me because I realized that my standard of what is enough rest or what is a good level of energy was completely skewed for pretty much my entire adult life. And for a lot of that time, I also believed in some pretty toxic mentalities around productivity. Like the idea that you always have to be doing something productive or that, you know, sleep is for the week and you you can sleep when you're dead.
But the ironic thing is that that actually made me waste more of my time and waste more of my evenings. And this is because of this idea of tracking your energy levels. So if I draw it out like this, if we have energy here on the y-axis and we have time here on the x-axis, this is what I thought was happening to me is that I would start the beginning of my day really energetic and then throughout the day I get more tired.
I go to sleep, I recover, you know, and this cycle continues. So I'm basically, you know, starting really energized and then I'm getting tired throughout the day and then as I sleep and recover I, you know, restart on the next day. Uh what I didn't realize is that it wasn't like this at all because at no point was I really at optimum energy and what I thought was my optimum was actually already at a completely compromised state.
And so the reality of what was happening was actually more like this. Years of sleep deprivation and constantly sacrificing my recovery and rest had brought me down to this baseline and I was just kind of fluctuating down here. And I'd begun to think that this was just normal.
And the reason I never realized that there's actually all of this energy I could still have is because when I go to sleep, I don't feel drastically more energetic than any previous day. And the reason is that once you let yourself get to this point, the amount of time it takes to actually recover back from this point is actually very, very, very long. For me personally, it took probably three to four months of really focusing on getting enough sleep, not setting any alarms, just going to sleep and waking up only when I feel rested.
And this is why even when I went on leave, you know, I took like 2 weeks off, I still came back at the end of my 2 weeks feeling honestly pretty much just as tired as when I left. Evenings were not restorative, weekends were not restorative, leave was not restorative, and most of the time, like who has three to four months just to like do nothing? And the difference was significant.
I was sharper. I was faster. I was understanding and comprehending things more quickly.
I was having better ideas. I was feeling happier and just more stable. And the really dangerous part is that I never realized that I was operating below my optimum for all those years.
And so the secret is that you never want to get to this point down here. You never want to enter into that danger zone. You want to, if possible, stay here.
And as you notice that you are starting to drop below a certain point, you want to then prioritize your rest and recovery in such a way that you can then quickly bounce back. If you stay in this optimum band, you can rest and recover fully after just a single night's sleep because you haven't let yourself get so burnt out for so long. So here's the takeaway.
You can't pour out of an empty cup. If you want to be more productive in the evenings, do you even have the energy to be productive in the evenings? And the way you answer that question and you figure out what is your true natural optimum energy state is to do some experimenting.
Look at your existing schedule. Look at your sleep schedule. Think about how much sleep that you're getting and then try to push that up a little bit.
You may need to change a few things around in your life or in your routine, but I promise you it is so worth it once you figure out exactly how much rest you truly need. And FYI, for me, I know that that number is 9 hours in bed. And so even if I'm not able to get that much sleep every single night, if I'm feeling tired, I can at least point to it and know, well, this is the reason why I'm feeling tired today and not just wonder what's wrong with me.
Now, there is one other thing other than sleep that can make a huge difference to how energized you feel. And so, if you're not able to get that perfect amount of sleep, this second strategy might be what you need. Strategy number two is to treat your energy like a generator, not a battery.
Most people think about their energy like a battery. they start charged and then as the day goes on, as they do activities, that drains down. So that means the more stuff that you do during the day, the more busy you are, the more things that you're thinking about, the more drain you have on this battery.
And so if you get to the end of the day and you're feeling really tired, what you have to do is don't do anything and let that battery recharge. And this is why doing nothing in the evenings can feel like the logical move. But when that happens, then you fall into what I call the too tired trap, which is where you feel like you are too tired to do anything.
And so you spend that time to rest, but then after you rest, you spend that energy on your daily life activities. At the end of that, you feel too tired to do anything else. And so you feel too tired to spend whatever free time you have in the evenings on doing the things that you truly enjoy or find fulfillment in.
And so now not only do you feel too tired in the evenings, you now also feel uh lazy and unproductive and guilty. And the switch for me which really allowed me to make very full use of these evenings was realizing that my energy is more like a generator and that certain activities and tasks generate energy much faster than just resting and doing nothing. Throughout pretty much my entire university life, I was spending most evenings either uh tutoring or learning about learning science or coaching people or eventually building my business.
And so it sounds exhausting that I was working, you know, 100 and 110 120 hours a week every week almost non-stop for years. Even when I was working as a junior doctor, I would come home from my shift and then I'd work on my business until I went to sleep. The most common question that people ask me throughout medical school or while working as a doctor was how do I do so much in my day while studying or working?
And so the way that I see it now is that it's not how was I able to work as a doctor while running a business in the evenings. The reason I was able to have enough energy to work as a doctor is because in my evenings I spent that time energizing myself with this task that I found a lot of fulfillment and energy from. And now that doesn't have to be workrelated.
That could be just spending time with your family, uh playing music, playing sports, engaging in a hobby. But when you treat your energy like a generator, you're incentivized to do things in the evenings when you feel tired because you know that doing things is the solution to your energy problem. So the takeaway here is try to find at least one activity that genuinely excites and energizes you.
Something that you look forward to doing. As a general guideline of what I've seen work over the years and with the people that I coach, I would recommend looking for something that either involves some level of physical activity. So for me, I would go to the gym immediately after work.
So walking into the gym, I would be absolutely wiped out after a long clinical day. Walking out of the gym, I'm feeling more energized than when I walked in. So physical activity is a great one.
It could be as simple as just going for a walk. My second guideline is try to make it something that's at least a little bit cognitively effortful. Not something that's totally passive.
It could be something simple like solving a puzzle or painting something. Or it could be more effortful like, you know, if there's something that you're really excited to learn or a project that you're working on, do that. Dedicate a little bit of time every evening to just explore and identify which activity you feel energized from and make it a priority to spend time.
Maybe not every single day if it's not possible, but at least a couple times a week to help top up your energy levels. Now, personally, I feel that spending a little bit of time in the evenings to learn something is a very good use of that time. It's both productive and can be very fulfilling, and it's a needle mover in life.
Spending just 30 minutes in the evening to learn something new and interesting can really stack up to meaningful skills and progression in your life, and your career. Now, for me, I went a little bit overboard because I'd spend like hours every single evening like reading through hordes of research papers to figure out how learning science works. And if you're also interested in learning about learning science, but you don't want to have to rumage through so much research to do that, then a much faster way would be to read through my free weekly newsletters.
These newsletters are emails that I write myself, distilling through what I think are the most important things that I wish I had known when I was first starting out. They're full of interesting perspectives and insights and techniques. And at the end of every email, I try to have an actionable takeaway.
And so that could be your little practice, your little test for that evening. And the bonus is that the skills you gain from that practice, you can apply the next day and the next week at work or study. So if you're interested in signing up to that, it's totally free to join.
Uh I'll leave a link to that in the description below. So the second strategy was to generate more energy. Uh but you do have to be careful not to go overboard with this.
And this is where strategy number three comes into play, which is to cut the tiredness cycle. It is completely possible to be spending your evenings constantly doing things, feeling busy, getting to the end of the day, looking back and thinking there is no free time I could have used to do something else, and yet still feel it was unproductive and that that evening was wasted. And usually what that means is that it's not that you're lazy or complacent and not using that time is because the things that you're doing in that time are not the things that you really feel will give you that fulfillment or moving the needle towards the goals that are important to you.
This actually happened to me when I quit my job as a doctor and I decided to work on education and entrepreneurship full-time. I was thinking, man, if I've been able to do all of this while like on the side while working as a doctor and going through medical school, how much more can I achieve when this is my entire focus? And the result was honestly kind of disappointing and it was confusing to me at first because I was doing so much more work on my business and on improving my my coaching craft, but I wasn't getting the type of return that I was expecting.
And so if you are feeling constantly busy and you're on this hamster wheel every single evening, I'm going to give you the advice that I wish someone had told me at that time. Stop spending all of your time working expecting that the more work you do, the better your result is going to be. Here's what I realized is that at a certain point, you're not limited by how much work you're doing.
And for me, what I realized is that even though the quantity of work that I was doing was higher and I was very busy, the quality and alignment of what I was doing didn't increase by the same amount because I was spending all of my time working. I I I literally had an air mattress in my office. I would just sleep in my office.
The quality of every decision that I was making, every piece of work that I was generating and outputting, every problem that I was solving, the quality of all of that was being sacrificed. And in retrospect, one of the worst things about this is that I was robbing myself of just the mental freedom and time to think about things at a big picture level without the pressure of needing to complete tasks and do stuff. Just being able to sit back and reflect.
And so here's what I do now, and this is a takeaway that I'd give for you. Every evening, give yourself just one main goal, and then maybe one stretch goal. If you're feeling low in energy, do your generating activity to re-energize yourself.
And if you still feel like you're trying to pour out of an empty cup, give yourself the permission to just chill out and not do anything without feeling the guilt. Use that as an opportunity to maybe step back and just reflect on things. Making sure that I spend my time doing the right thing and then when I do spend my time, I get a good quality result is one of the most productive things that you can do.
And that is all about having rest, recalibration, and reflection. And if you struggle with figuring out that one main goal or the one stretch goal because there are so many things that are important to you that you want to do, then you definitely need this next strategy. Strategy number four is the or not and strategy.
If you want to say yes to the things that really matter to you, you have to say no to something else. There's no such thing as not having enough time. There is such a thing as not being a priority.
And here's the reason this or not and framing is so important. Let's say that this is a list of all the things that you want to do in an evening. The things that really matter to you.
And again, these could be simple things like just spending time with your family, walking the dog, you know, doing some learning, working on a side project, reading my newsletters, whatever it is that's important to you. Uh on most days, you're probably not going to be able to do every single thing that's on this list. And so you want right your your ideal is that you want to get to the end of the day and feel that you have accomplished everything.
The reality of it is that you'll get to the end of the day having only done a couple of these things. So the reason the or not and framing is so important is that you realize that this reality is the norm. This expectation of the ideal is the problem.
And if you don't realize that, then every single evening will feel like a waste of time and you'll feel bad about it because you see every single thing you wanted to do but then couldn't do. And you diminish the achievement of what you did do. But what you have to realize is that you have made a decision that by saying no to these things, you allowed yourself to prioritize the thing that you thought was more important that day.
The or not and strategy means that if there are multiple things that you want to do, you don't say I'm gonna do this and this and this. You say, should I do this or this? So, here's the takeaway.
Get a piece of paper out and write down the things that you feel like would make the your perfect day, the perfect evening, all the things that you want to do. And for each of those items, write what your buffer time is. The buffer time is the amount of leeway you have where you could not have it as a high priority and you could still recover from it later.
So for example, spending time with your family might be a high priority item for you, but you could not spend so much time with your family on one evening and it wouldn't really make a difference. So if you think you could reduce the amount of time you spend with your family for maybe 2 or 3 days and it wouldn't be such a big deal, then your buffer time would be 2 or 3 days. So that means that when you look at your evening and you think about what you want to do, you have a sense of what is important and what you would like to achieve, but you also have a sense for the things that you could safely say no to on any given day.
And you know that it's not really going to make a difference. And even if you want to fit more into your evenings, it might not be possible because of strategy number five. Strategy number five is to win the week, not the day.
The tendency is to want to do as many things in a single day. like we see the success on a daily basis. We measure how productive a day was and actually we make a value judgment on how good a day was based on our productivity which I is actually a toxic perspective in and of itself but because there is this tendency it feels really bad to cut the day short when you feel like you could squeeze a little bit more out of it.
And this is precisely the reason why I avoided a winddown nightly routine. And this strategy, strategy number five, is basically saying have a windown routine. When you do not wind down properly at night, sacrifices not only your quality of sleep, but maybe also when you get to sleep because you might end up procrastinating uh and then you cut down on the amount of rest that you get and then you wake up the next day, you feel tired.
And so by the evening, you feel tired and you can't do as much. And then you know the cycle just viciously repeats itself. And for years I experimented with windown routines and I resisted it I think mentally because I always felt like I wanted to just do more.
And the switch for me was when I was actually working in the emergency department and when you're working in an emergency department it's like a revolving door. There are patients that are just constantly coming in and out. And it doesn't really matter how fast you work or how many patients you see.
Of course you try to be as efficient as possible but at the end of your shift there's always going to be a patient that you didn't see. And when you come back the next day, there's always a backlog of patients to be seen. And you have to protect yourself because if you don't protect yourself and you protect your time and your energy, you're not going to be there the next day.
You're not going to be able to show up to see the next patient. I remember being so frazzled and busy in one of my first shifts and one of my seniors just puts a hand on my shoulder and they say, "Hey, you can't treat patients if you become a patient. " And it's, you know, the same in life.
There's always stuff to do. It's never ending. It's an infinite game that we're playing.
And so when I started implementing a windown routine, it really changed my life. My sleep efficiency and my sleep score actually doubled. The entire next day felt so much more refreshed.
I was more, you know, sharp and energetic. And that came from a 30inut windown routine. So basically sacrifice 30 minutes on that day.
Don't try to win the day. Aim to win the week. So, my takeaway for you is to set up a windown routine at night.
And here are three simple guidelines that I found make the most difference for an effective windown routine. The first thing is duration, at least 30 minutes. I'm such a believer now that I will extend that out to like 1 hour, 1 and 1/2 hours, sometimes even because I just know how much better the next day is going to be.
So, I don't feel guilty at all for cutting my day short, but at a minimum 30 minutes. During that 30 minutes, guideline number two, no screen time. Install an app blocker.
Do not disturb timers. Set, you know, a schedule so that you know you're not getting notifications. Avoid screens for the entire wind down routine until you go to sleep.
The only time I look at my phone again is to just set the alarm. And number three, do something that slows down your thoughts. If you feel like there's a lot of ideas or problems that are whirling around in your head, maybe use that 30 minutes to do some writing.
Slow it down. Write your thoughts out. Give it a chance to all come out.
so that you're not just lying there in bed just like bouncing it around. If that's not the case, then what I like to do is I like to do some reading. It's calm, it's relaxing, and it helps my eyes get sleepy.
At the end of your routine, you want to be going to bed feeling like you want to go to sleep. And one of the worst things that you can do is go to bed not sleepy, lying in bed, forcing yourself to try to get to sleep, which is actually just going to build an anxiety around falling asleep. And that's what leads to insomnia.
Now, your windown routine is going to be much more effective uh and it's going to be easier to get to sleep without procrastinating if you follow this next strategy, which is strategy number six. Create procrastination space. If you've heard of this term called revenge bedtime procrastination, it's probably going to resonate with a lot of you.
It definitely resonates with me. It's this idea that you're so busy throughout the day and you never feel like you've got enough time and control in your day that before you go to sleep, you try to exert some level of control through scrolling on your phone and like browsing, you know, doom scrolling and procrastinating. The control that was missing in your life comes back at bedtime with vengeance.
And so the way that you combat that is that you give yourself those blocks where you can just procrastinate. you can give yourself the mental control to do whatever you want to do. So for me, I have an app blocker and I have five windows throughout the day.
Five five minute blocks where I can unblock my apps and I can scroll on Instagram, I can do whatever I want. And because I kind of give myself that little bit of, you know, no pressure, do whatever I want, scroll if I want to time during the day, by the end of the day, I don't feel so much this need to like reclaim this loss control. And then I can get into my windown routine and it feels great because I feel like I'm doing something that's just so good for me.
And so the takeaway for you is to set up maybe two or three or four or five of these freedom windows. Try to limit it to five to 10 minutes if you can and install some app blockers that allow you to configure these freedom windows in this way. By the way, if procrastination is something that you are really struggling with, then I do go into that in more detail in one of my newsletters.
So, just as a reminder, if you wanted to sign up, the link to that is in the description. And now finally moving on to the final strategy number seven which is actually the first strategy that I used uh to start reclaiming my free time and is one that I use to this day which is to avoid energy dead spots. One of the things I realized pretty early on in uni was that uh taking the bus home after uni was exhausting because I would be stuck in this bus for like an hour in traffic.
By the time I got home I was so lethargic and lazy and sleepy. I would just take a nap. And so I just stopped taking the bus during traffic hours.
So I just stay at uni all day, just study there and then I just bus home at night. And this practice of actively thinking about which parts of the day or after what activities I feel less energetic and bypassing those or doing something to spike my energy at the same time was a strategy that I used during medical school and I continue to use every single day. And this strategy, even though it's the final one on the list, I think is probably one of the easiest things that people can implement that makes one of the biggest differences, which is figuring out which activities or blocks of time, you have a sharp drop in energy from.
For a lot of people, it is the commute coming home from work. And so, the takeaway is figure out where these energy dead spots are and do whatever you can to either avoid them or turn them into an energizing activity. Could you stay at work for an extra hour to beat the traffic and do some admin and life planning or reflecting or learning?
Could you do what I did and fit your workout in after work immediately? It might be inconvenient, but is it as inconvenient as feeling tired every single evening for the rest of your life? And if it's really not possible, what could you do during that time to make it a little bit more energizing?
For most people, this is a really effective strategy because these energy dead spots are not usually based on time of day. It's usually based on the activity that happens normally at that time of day. And sometimes you can think outside the box.
So for example, one software developer that I was coaching uh he actually decided to go from driving into work which would take him 30 minutes and he decided to take the train which makes it 1 hour. But he realized that there wasn't an easy way for him to make that 30 minute drive not an energy dead spot. But if he took the train, he could spend most of his time doing something engaging cuz he's not busy driving.
And so even though it took longer, by the time he got home, he'd already achieved one of his important goals for the day. And this is why it's important to think about it not as time, but in terms of activities. So those are the seven strategies to stop wasting your evenings.
And again, I'm not saying you have to do something that's productive every single hour of your life. But I hope these strategies can help you at least use this time in a way that's more intentional and aligned with what you really want. Whether that is working on a side project or patting your kittens, honestly, which is a great evening activity.
And if you want to learn a little bit more about how to increase your productivity in a sustainable and healthy way, then check out this video here where I go into some other principles. Thanks so much for watching and I will see you next time.
