When you have a set morning routine, you’re more efficient, productive, and focused at work. The same is true of an afternoon routine! Do you feel the post-lunch slump dragging your productivity to all-time lows? Here are a few things you can incorporate into your afternoon routine to fix it.

1. Time to Move:

Taking a post-lunch walk or a walk a few hours before you leave for the day will help revitalize your energy. Making time to move in your afternoon routine will keep you motivated to push through any brain cobwebs that start to form after you’ve worked hard all morning.

2. Perfect Time for Meetings:

Scheduling something interactive that you can’t cancel is actually a good idea for your afternoon routine. It will hold you accountable to get something done, the interactive nature of meetings or collaborative sessions with coworkers will keep you focused, and these tasks are better reserved for this time period because you need to focus on more challenging, focus-driven tasks in the morning.

3. Spend a Small Pocket of Time on a Big Project:

You have a big project to tackle so, naturally, it probably took up most of your morning. If you need to move on from that big project and focus on the rest of your workload in the afternoons, spend just a small pocket of time (20 minutes to an hour) making final progress on your big project before moving on to other tasks.

4. Focus on the Easy Stuff:

If you want an afternoon routine to work, you need to focus on the easy stuff right when you get back from lunch and slowly transition into more challenging work. This will help you ease into a mindset of productivity and focus. When you focus on your easier tasks first, you’ll get a lot done in a short period of time. With that momentum, you’ll be able to transition back into more challenging work easily and you’ll get a lot more done in the afternoon than you usually do.

5. Brainstorming and Solving Puzzles:

If you feel the fog of an afternoon slump coming on, take some time in your afternoon routine for brainstorming or puzzle solving. Reengaging your analytical and creative faculties will clear the way for a more productive afternoon.

6. Plan Tomorrow:

One thing you need to make time for in your afternoon routine, preferably at the end, is to plan the next day. Taking time to plan tomorrow will help you stay productive from the moment you walk in the door the next day to the moment you leave.

Productivity experts may not talk about afternoon routines as often as morning routines but their power shouldn’t be underestimated. If you want to focus, get more work done, and power through the latter half of your workday make sure you have a great morning routine that factors in one or more of the aforementioned 6 points.

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