Daily Habits of Successful People

Habits of Creative People

It’s often true that creative minds tend to wander.  We’ve learned from our own experience, as well as that of many successful creators, that it’s the daily habits of successful people that make all the difference in progress and accomplishment.

Leonardo Da Vinci was known for his wandering mind and rarely finishing the majority of his work. However, he is also known for a lifetime of extensive study, practice and experimentation, and deep inquiry and contemplation.

More often than not, creators resist constraints and schedules with a preference for free-flowing spontaneity. We can certainly relate to that. However, most success stories are based on the structure of daily habits and routines that compound positively over time.  

Table of Contents:

• Habits of Creative People
• Productive Mornings
  • Morning Productivity Tip
• Daily Habits of Successful People
  • Jeff Goins – Bestselling Author, Award-Winning Blogger and Internet Entrepreneur
  • Sara Blakely – Founder of Spanx, Billionaire Businesswoman and Investor
  • Hugh MacLeod – Visual Artist Entrepreneur, Public Speaker and Creative Genius
  • Tom Bilyeu – Successful Entrepreneur, Impeccable Host and Founder of Impact Theory
  • Thom King – Serial Entrepreneur, Creator of Products, Books, and Business
• Sustain Daily Creation with Positive Habits
• Never Underestimate the Power of Daily Habits

Positive habits help turn ideation into manifestation.

“Positive habits create a vehicle for creative ideas to reach their destination.”
~LeAura Alderson, writer, editor, creator iCreateDaily.com®

The structure of daily creative routines leads to greater creative freedom and success.
~Devani Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

Productive Mornings

Morning routines are popular amongst successful entrepreneurs and creators. Tim Ferriss, famed author of the ‘Four Hour Work Week’, amongst others, says he never start the day with email or social media.

Email and social media put you into reaction mode.

To begin your day with email and social media can quickly derail you from your goals for the day. We’ve certainly noticed the difference in our own productivity when we start our day with creative writing vs responding to external demands.

It’s astonishing how the most productive hours of the morning can be so quickly gobbled up by responding to notifications. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, however, far better to inculcate the habit of time blocking during your most productive hours of the day.

Morning Productivity Tip

Save the social responses and emails for later in the day when you’re tired. Chances are the engaging conversation will help perk up your energy.  This gives you a double win: productive morning energized later by contributing and engaging with your audience and email.

If you’ve been struggling with your own productivity, try implementing just one productive habit for a week. Next week, add another.
~Devani Alderson, iCreateDaily.com®

Daily Habits of Successful People

Here are profiles of highly productive creators and their daily habits.  Can you guess the most common success habit shared by most?

Successful creators make time for creating every day!

Jeff Goins – Bestselling Author, Award-Winning Blogger and Internet Entrepreneur

You don’t just become a 2-times bestselling author and award-winning blogger without solid habits in place. Jeff Goins is no exception.

Goins is a prolific writer and author with numerous best selling books. He also publishes a daily blog post, speaks at events including, run his own conference called Tribe Writers Live conference, and hosts the Tribe Writers online writing course.

Jeff is also the father to two young kids, husband to Ashley Goins… oh, and a podcaster!  Portfolio Life is a podcast where Jeff shares: “Thoughts & ideas that will help you to pursue work that matters, make a difference with your art & discover your true voice.” 

JEFF GOINS SUCCESS HABITS

• Write 500 words a day
• Running early each morning
• 3 Bucket Writing system
• Intentionally taking breaks from social media

You can hear more of Jeff’s story on this iCreateDaily podcast episode, where he also shares about his 3 Bucket Writing System.  One of our favorite books from Jeff Goins is Real Artists Don’t Starve: Timeless Strategies for Thriving in the New Creative Age.

JEFF GOINS ON DISTRACTIONS AND SOCIAL MEDIA:
“When I started writing every day, I realized a painful truth: I can’t react and create at the same time. Neither can you.”
~ Jeff Goins, speaker, writer, author, b.1983

Sara Blakely – Founder of Spanx, Billionaire Businesswoman and Investor

Sara Blakely went from selling fax machines door-to-door to innovating an idea that revolutionized women’s underwear.

So how do you make the leap from being a fax seller to recreating an entire industry and becoming a billionaire?

With guest appearances on Shark Tank, a marriage, and 4 kids all under the age of 7, we can probably learn a thing or two about productive habits from Sara Blakely.  This amazing entrepreneur is the creator of the women’s undergarment line, the billion dollar company called Spanx.

Blakely could not have achieved her incredible success story without the structure of daily success habits.  Today, Sara is free to spend more time with her family and pursue her passion of supporting mostly women-owned companies and non-profits as an investor and philanthropist.

Sara’s favorite time to think and generate ideas is while driving.  Though she lives only five minutes from her office, Sara purposefully takes detours to extend the drive, just for the treasured time to ideate!

SARA BLAKELY’S SUCCESS HABITS

• 6:30 am yoga at home
• Healthy breakfast smoothie every morning
• Creates commute time for generating and developing ideas
• Schedules task-focused days

If you’re also busy with running your creative endeavors, business, family, work… It’s important to find a quiet time to think. Whether it’s during your office commute, rising early before the family is awake, or staying up late, find—or create—the quiet creative time that works for you.

You can learn more about Sara Blakely’s story on The School of Greatness podcast with a great guy, Lewis Howes!

“Perseverance is the key to starting a successful business.”
~Sara Blakely, Founder-Spanx

Hugh MacLeod – Visual Artist Entrepreneur, Public Speaker and Creative Genius

Hugh MacLeod is a comic artist, speaker, and entrepreneur. His unique work is featured in the halls of corporations around the world, including Microsoft and Zappos.

Hugh gives speeches about creativity and it’s application in business, and he’s been creating out of the box art and cartoons for over 20 years.

“Art has the power to transform business.”
~Hugh MacLeod, founder Gaping Void

HUGH MacLEOD’S SUCCESS HABITS

• Write everyday
• Cube grenades*
• Sends a daily email to subscribers
• Daily business card for someone he admires (and ships them 100 for free!)

Hugh says:  “I have to do those four things every day. It’s all about work ethic and continuity.”

*“Cube Grenades”- small objects that you “throw” in there to cause some damage, to start a conversation, to spread an idea etc.  You can read the full story here.

“I work extremely hard doing what I love. Mainly to ensure that I don’t have to work extremely hard doing what I hate.”
~Hugh MacLeod, founder Gaping Void

Tom Bilyeu – Successful Entrepreneur, Impeccable Host and Founder of Impact Theory

One of our favorite entrepreneurs is Tom Bilyeu.  Tom—along with his amazing wife of many years, Lisa Bilyeu—cofounded Quest Nutrition in 2010. Tom’s mission: to help end metabolic disease to help his family and others eat healthier foods that also tasted good. Today, Question is worth billion dollars!

Tom and his cofounders expanded Quest to include tasty healthy snacks, protein shakes, and bars and grew by 57,000% in its first 3 years!!!^[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Bilyeu

The Bilyeus’ sold the bulk of their shares in Quest around 2015, and Tom continued working at Quest until 2016.  The day after he left his company, Tom and Lisa immediately started their next great endeavor, Impact Theory.

Impact Theory, is a mindset empowerment brand helping people achieve success. by changing their mindset. Tom is well known for his masterful style of hosting interviews with the world’s top achievers.

Impact Theory’s mission is:
“To free people from The Matrix. Said another way, we want to end the poverty of poor mindset.”

Though Tom is incredibly disciplined in his personal and work habits, he did not start out being the genius businessman he’s known for today. In fact, while it’s hard to believe, Tom says he used to be a super lazy, unmotivated, and an uninspired underachiever.

Tom’s compelling purpose: helping his family overcome morbid obesity and get healthy. With unswerving focus on this mission, Tom was able to change his own lazy habits into productive ones.

TOM BILYEU’S SUCCESS HABITS:

• Good sleep
• Working out
• Meditation
• Reading
• Ignoring email

You can read the full 7 Habits from Tom Bilyeu here.

“Dissect how you spend your time. It reveals your priorities.”
~ Tom Bilyeu; cofounder Quest Nutrition & Impact Theory

Thom King – Serial Entrepreneur, Creator of Products, Books, and Business

Part CEO, part personal development wonk, and part biohacker info geek, Thom King is a self-confessed serial—and 5th Generation—entrepreneur! Have you had (or heard about) the sweetener Stevia? Thom King is the man responsible for introducing stevia to the US markets through his company Steviva.

But, like many ideators, the itch to create didn’t stop after one business! Thom has applied the same discipline of building a company to other areas of his life including his health.  Guy Gone Keto started as a book about Thom’s health journey and expanded into a product’s brand of ketogenic sauces and foods.

You can learn more about Thom’s keto journey in this video interview and article on our fitness site.

THOM KING’S SUCCESS HABITS: 

• Journaling first thing in the morning
• Hour of Power (workout, meditation, running)
• Writing down goals

You can hear more about Thom King’s story on the iCreateDaily podcast!

“I really think writing things down and getting your goals on paper… there’s something magical about that. I’m a person rooted in science… but when you set your intention and map out what you want to do, that part of getting it in writing seems to be a catalyst for manifesting.”
~Thom King, Serial entrepreneur, founder: Steviva Brands, iCon Foods, GuyGoneKeto

More Daily Habits of Successful People

Benjamin Hardy, organizational psychologist, author, philosopher

• Great sleep
• Journaling every day – centers, context & goals
• Creating boundaries for self and work
• Exercise
• Reading a lot
• Trying to create something every single day

Sustain Daily Creation with Positive Habits

iCreateDaily Success Habits

When we started iCreateDaily, we only had about three articles on the website for the first few months. That’s pretty sad for a company called “iCreateDaily” right?! Of course, it’s not like we were being idle… we had other brands to manage.

LeAura was already averaging 12-13 hour work days, 7 days a week.  I was managing client accounts as well as our family brands.  So we didn’t have time… but we still increased our commitment to writing an article a day for iCreateDaily.

Publishing an article a day became one of LeAura’s 90 Day Goals for the first Quarter of 2018.

I helped by uploading the audios and creating the visuals for publishing the articles, and occasionally wrote articles as well. My next goal will be to become more efficient in my other tasks so that so that I can write more! ?

The discipline of the daily habits of writing, prepping and publishing content, resulted in accomplishing far more than we could ever have imagined in under two years.

In addition to running our ecommerce stores, managing our other family portfolio of websites…

In Just 18 Months we…

1. Created and published 9 journals, now sold on Amazon and in our Shopify Store
2. Published 268 podcast episodes
3. 177 articles here on iCreateDaily.com
4. Wrote and sent out daily emails for iCreateDaily
5. Converted our mostly weekly gardening email for our GardensAll website into a daily email beginning 4/1/19
6. Hosted 4 creative challenges for creators, artists, writers and gratitude.
7. Manage two Facebook groups and two primary Facebook pages
8. Also manage the other social accounts for our primary and secondary brands
9. Purchased a new recipe website for which we’re slowing building content
10. Manage an average of 4 regular virtual assistants (VAs)

“Creating daily through the structure of goal setting has increased our productivity, tenfold.”
LeAura Alderson, Co-creator-iCreateDaily 90 Day Goals Journals

Never Underestimate the Power of Daily Habits

Do you know the most amazing thing we discovered? Increasing our output exponentially, did not increase our hours worked.

Do we still work hard and too many hours? Yes, for now. That’s just a part of our current journey.  We’re willing to put in the extra time and effort now because we’re in it for the long haul. Our big goals require it and building brands is our creative craft.

You inspire those who also want to be in touch with their creative spark.  But most importantly, elevating yourself through habits makes you feel good.

Creativity is a habit.

“Positive habits elevate your environment even if your environment doesn’t currently elevate you.”
~Devani Alderson, Cofounder-iCreateDaily.com®

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