What makes successful people successful? Here's what I found about healthy, productive habits and daily routines of successful people.

1. Daily Habits and Morning
Routines
of Successful Executives and CEOs

2. What makes successful people successful?
Jim Citrin of Yahoo! Finance wanted to study
the daily habits and routine of 20 CEOs. He
received complete answers to his survey from
17 out of the 20 CEO’s he queried, and there
were some very noticeable patterns that
formed when you look at the routines of all of
these successful people. Here are some of the
results:

3. Wake up early.
This is the time of day where most people find that they have
the ability to take control of the day. There’s a couple reasons
behind this. One is that science has proven that humans are
limited with our self-control. The strength of self-control draws
from a well that gets depleted over time. Kind of like a muscle,
it gets fatigued after too much exertion. Getting up early and
getting the things that are most important or most unpleasant
to do earlier in the day makes us more likely to accomplish
them. The other reason is that no one but you can make
demands on your time in the early morning. Once business
hours start, or the family wakes up, anything can happen to
demand your attention and pull focus away from your tasks.
None of the executives studied got up after 6am. Most alarms
were set between 4:30 and 5:30am.

4. Tip: Try not checking messages or emails first thing in the day,
wait until you have accomplished several things on your to-do
list first. Messages from others make you beholden to the
people and potential problems that will hijack your focus from
your productive hours and put you in reactive mode. If it is
urgent, they will call you.

5. Exercise daily.
More than 70% of the business leaders surveyed perform
exercise in the morning, the rest fit it in during the day, at
lunch, or at night before bed. Almost none of them did not
exercise at least a small amount on a regular basis. Anna
Wintour, Editor In Chief of Vogue starts each day at 5:45am with
an hour long tennis match. Some people’s schedules only
involved a few minutes of stretching or a quick walk to get
coffee. You can find the activity and time commitment to
match your schedule and personal tastes, but it’s better to get
the blood flowing every day.
Tip: Keep a glass of water by your bedside and drink the whole
thing before you even turn off your alarm. Dehydration can
cause fatigue and fuzzy thinking. Often times when you wake
up groggy it isn’t because you need more sleep, it’s because
you need more water.

6. Make a “Tomorrow List”.
Before you leave the office each day, write down the tasks you
need to complete each day. Put it right in the middle of your
desk, or tape it to your computer monitor so it’s the first thing
you see each day. Look at the list and use it to base your daily
strategy off of. Before you leave the office, end your day by
writing tomorrow’s list. This keeps you on track and you walk
into your day with tasks already planned out and slept on. If
you make your lists first thing in the morning, you use up
valuable early-morning time.
Tip: Even if you know you are not going to get to it that day, if
you know it needs to get done, write it down on your “tomorrow
list” anyway. It will help keep it fresh in your mind, and if you
keep transferring it from to-do list to to-do list eventually
you’ll find time to get it done simply so you don’t have to keep
writing that to-do down anymore!

7. One simple question.
Steve Jobs gave a commencement speech to Stanford in 2005
where he revealed one of his motivational tactic that he used
to start each day. “For the past 33 year, I have looked in the
mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last
day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”
And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a
row, I know I need to change something.”
Tip: Ask yourself the same thing in the morning. Does that
change your to-do list?