How we start the day has a massive impact on how we finish the day and how we feel about it.
A good start sets us up to feel in control, accomplished and successful. That feeling of success carries forward into the next thing we do and the one after that, pretty soon we’re riding a wave of success and having a great day (or week or year!)
Going into any activity with a heightened state of confidence increases our creativity and chance of doing good work.
Success builds success.
So the question is, how effective is your morning routine in setting you up for success?
Let’s define success?
What does success look like to you?
For me, it’s moving forward on my priority goals, those things that move my business forward or increase my skills and abilities. Today it’s writing this article. I’m working to develop the ability to communicate clearly with people, convey ideas and provide value through my explanations and questions as this skill is important in all the work I do.
To be clear, it’s not about dealing with emails, processing invoices or bills, checking my bank statement. No, it’s about progressive work which moves the ball forward. I want my world to be that bit better after I’ve completed it.
What project or priority will have the most impact on your world?
What are the actions or habits you want to learn or boost?
What is the most important thing to get done to move your ball forward?
To borrow a fantastic question from The One Thing book…
What is the one thing I can do, such that by doing it will make everything else easier or unnecessary?
The one thing
A great morning starts the night before
Part of having a trusted system is planning ahead and one of the best activities we can do is to round off a day by reviewing our progress and mapping out what we want tomorrow to look like. I advocate a weekly process of planning two weeks ahead with the option to adjust and amend the plan as priorities change during the week.
At the end of each workday, a review of success and round up of loose ends gives us the opportunity to check if tomorrows schedule still suits the overall goals for the week / month / year.
If they do… great… job done!
If they don’t… great… you get to adapt the plan to better suit your goals.
Getting started on getting started…
One of the key principles here is to give yourself the best opportunity to focus fully on your priority items as early in the day as you can before you get distracted or drained by the muck and bullets of a typical day.
Make success easier than failure.
So here are my actions.
Do the day before…
- Clear the desk, put everything back in its proper place if not already there.
- Review my daily goals plan and calendar, adapt the plan and time blocks if necessary.
- List my top three success actions for the next day on my daily / weekly planner sheet.
Do in the morning…
- Check my calendar, what meetings and commitments do I have today.
- Confirm my top three success items for the day and list them on the daily / weekly planner if not already there.
- Minimise distractions, close everything down except what I need for this activity, put my phone on quiet, put music on if that helps (I find certain types of music help me focus on different activities and I’m sure Pavlov would have something to say about linking sound with activity!)
- Get started on my priority-one item.
Confirm the desired outcome from this activity or time block. It could be something that gets finished in this session or it could be a duration goal such as working consistently on a bigger piece for a set amount of time e.g. one hour of writing my book.
The important thing here is to know what success looks like for you. Why are you doing this and what difference is it going to make? - At the end of the activity or time block, update my daily / weekly sheet to mark it as done and cross it through with a green highlighter. (Aside: green = good in my mind after years of project status reviews and Red / Amber / Green flags. Again, Pavlov would have something to say about this).
- Capture any follow-up actions required in the appropriate place. If that’s not possible, use the white space at the end of my daily / weekly sheet. The important thing here is to close off the first item and avoid carrying anything in my head.
- Move on to the next item scheduled on my calendar and only open email when I’ve got it scheduled!
To build trust in the yourself and your system, repeat the end of day / start of day routine EVERY day until it becomes habit.
So, what is your priority?
What is your desired outcome from the next action on that priority?
How will you make it part of your start of day routine?
How can you make a morning routine part of your trusted system?
Building habits is simple but not necessarily easy. If you’d like help clarifying your priorities or want to learn more about how to create your own trusted system, check out the other articles on this site and if you’d like help getting started or fine-tuning your system to achieve your biggest goals get in touch and let’s talk.
Best wishes for your success.
Andrew
Disclaimer: The information contained above is provided for information purposes only. The contents of this article are not intended to amount to advice and you should not rely on any of the contents of this article. Professional advice should be obtained before taking or refraining from taking any action as a result of the contents of this article. Andrew Marshman disclaims all liability and responsibility arising from any reliance placed on any of the contents of this article.
