“Eat a live frog first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” ~Mark Twain
I've been thinking about my morning routine lately. Lots of gurus have published papers, talks, video series and workshops about being more effective in your work day. One of the most famous, Tony Robbins, created the Hour of Power, a workday starter that includes exercise, motivational reading and even a gratitude exercise. Lots of others have similar programs to get your day started on the right foot.
One common theme, especially important for today's modern world, is not starting your day with email. Most of these workday effectiveness programs recommend not looking at your email until your first segment of the day is complete. That segment looks different for each program, but mostly involves getting a handle on your priority list of the day and completing that one big important item on your list. Hence the quote above.
As our business grows and the work increases, it becomes more important to prioritize our work and remove distractions from our day. Becoming a better, more effective leader and business manager means handling our days with more effectiveness. The better you are and more effectively you run your business, the more people will want a part of your day. That's just natural. What's not natural, is finding a way to see the people you need to see to keep your business growing while not letting the distractions overwhelm you.
I struggle with this just like everyone else.
Do you have a strategy for managing your day more effectively? If so, why don't you share it with us.
I typically check my two email accounts and (if one has fired off) my latest blog post first thing while I drink my coffee. I get the kids on the bus and maybe get some laundry going, and then I settle in to write.
ReplyDeleteOne of my CPs, however, writes first and doesn't even open her email until noon or later. She doesn't have kids (that's something I can't change), but I've been wondering if I should write first and deal with social media later. It's such a black hole. It sucks you in and, before you know what's happened, you've wasted half a day.
The thing is, sometimes there are things I need to deal with early - like an urgent email or a blog post with some kind of error (had one this morning with a gadget that was broken--needed fixing). And I can't really sink into my ms and write before the kids are out the door anyhow.
Maybe the thing is to allow myself some time to get my ducks in a row, then close the tabs for email, blog, Hootsuite, Twitter, etc., and only leave open Thesaurus.com while I'm writing. If the social media tabs were gone, they wouldn't be tempting me to check every time I open my browser.
Great post. Commenting helped me work through my time management issues. Hope I didn't bore you in the process. :D
Thanks for commenting Melissa. Typically, I scan my email on my phone while I'm reading the paper and eating breakfast. If I have something urgent from a client, I can deal with it first thing, otherwise, I can ignore the email and get started with more important issues. Being in the marketing and business strategy business, I have actual paying clients. So I have to deal with their issues on a timely basis. Not opening email until noon is just not an option for me. But by checking it on my phone, I can determine if there are client sensitive issues to handle without getting sucked into the social media black hole. Chris
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