Why your morning routine can work wonders.
What if you could be certain you would achieve what you set out to each day and feel fulfilled and empowered?
It sounds like an impossible dream. And yet we all have days like that sometimes. It’s just that more often than not we get to the end of the day and think “what did I achieve today?” Or even “what’s the point?”
Here are three simple steps that you can follow on a weekly or daily basis that will transform your days, if you take action. If you follow these simple steps for 30 days, you will discover a renewed sense of control over your life, an appreciation of both your worth and the contribution you make. You will discover how to spend more quality time doing the things you love and spending time with the people you love.
Can You Change Your Relationship With Time?
We all get the same 24 hours a day and some people seem to get so much more done. They say that if you want a job done, give it to a busy person. That’s true. People who are productive do look busy but there is another side to their productivity and that is they prepare.
Tip 1: Only You Can Do It
Time management is simple. Decide what you are going to do, plan when you are going to do it and then do it when you plan to do it.
Simples, yes?
Well no.
It could be simple, but if you are like every other business owner on the planet, you have to deal with competing responsibilities.
So before you plan your time, you must decide what is important and what is not. And if we take that one step further, we get to:
- What is important that only you can do.
- What is important that you love to do and are brilliant at.
- What is important that someone else can do.
- And, finally, what is not important.
You want to plan your time so that you get the most of ‘what only you can do’ and ‘what you love to do and are best at’ done in your day.
And to help you with that you may want to delegate all the other important stuff to other people who are brilliant at doing those tasks.
Your time is specifically for you to get done what you must do. That is the purpose of your time. How you do that is the dynamic of how you go about making sure that your time is spent doing just that.
Tip 2 – Getting The Important Stuff Done
If you know what is important for you to do each day, then the next step would be to fill your diary with all of the tasks you can fit into your allocated amount of work time. Well, that is what so many people do and thereby set themselves up to fail.
If, like me, you start your day early, between 6 and 6.30 am and finish at a reasonable 5 to 5.30 pm you have around 11 hours available to you for work. Take out exercise and meals that leaves around 9 hours. Set aside preparation time, that still leaves you with 8 hours of time to get stuff done.
A variety of research has shown that of those 8 hours, the average worker is only doing productive work for just less than 3 hours. With this in mind, it is advisable to NOT fill up your day with tasks back to back.
The best way to plan your day is to identify the core focuses for your day and prioritise them. Here are three simple steps for mapping out your day:
- Decide on your three core goals for the day.
- Identify any smaller tasks that must get done.
- Schedule them into your day with plenty of buffer time between tasks.
Buffer time is not wasted time. It is time you allocate at the start of the day to deal with life’s emergencies that will get thrown at you. But instead of a knee jerk reaction of dropping everything and focusing on the distractions that appear, you can acknowledge them and plan to deal with them during your buffer time slots.
Tip 3: Setting Yourself Up to Win… Every Day!
All this preparation and planning sounds great but when are you going to do it? The simple answer is at the beginning of your day, at whatever time that is. It is what I help business owners to implement as part of their NICE Leadership® practice.
For me, it is my first hour. That hour sets me up for the day and achieves three important things:
- Prepares my mind.
- Prepares my body.
- Prepares my environment.
At the end of my morning routine I am set up and ready to tackle the three core goals and the important tasks that only I can do or that gives me great joy and I am brilliant at.
I can happily share my morning routine with you, but that would be like wearing my shoes all day. They won’t fit, they will be uncomfortable and could make you miserable. That’s because they are my shoes, not yours.
You need to create your own morning routine AND when you do, you need to do it every working day. I don’t do mine on the weekend. If you would like to see my morning routine in full and use my weekly and daily planning pages to get you started, click the link and learn how to Use My Proven Weekly and Daily Planners to Make Your Best Mondays!
If you would be interested to discover more about how I work as a business coach in Hampshire then please contact me.