With four children and a business, time is definitely a precious commodity around here. However, I’ve recently adopted a new habit that gives me the equivalent of an extra month of productivity every year. And no, it does not involve four weeks of sleep-away camp. It simply involves waking up an hour earlier.Calendar with Date Circled in Red

One hour per workday over the course of 48 weeks (leaving a few weeks for vacations and holidays) adds up to 240 hours per year. Divide this by the typical eight-hour workday and you have an extra 30 days of productivity each year.

Adding an extra hour to our morning routine yields so much more than any other time. They say morning is the most productive time in our day. Our willpower, self-control and energy levels are highest at the beginning of our workday. This means we are generally better off when we tackle our toughest jobs at the beginning of our day. Otherwise, these jobs could take much longer later in the day. Or the tempting urge to procrastinate can too easily win out.

Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational and Professor of Psychology and Behavioral Economics at Duke claims that the first two hours of our day are the most productive. Ariely laments: “One of the saddest mistakes in time management is the propensity of people to spend the two most productive hours of their day on things that don’t require high cognitive capacity (like social media). If we could salvage those precious hours, most of us would be much more successful in accomplishing what we truly want.”

Laura Vanderkam, author of What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast finds that making smart use of the early morning is a practice most highly successful people share. “Seizing your mornings is the equivalent of that sound financial advice to pay yourself before you pay your bills.”

Clearly, the beginning of our day is precious. Yet so many professionals give it away to others by jumping right into meetings, or spending it on reactive tasks like email. “Starting each day with email and voicemail is cognitively expensive” according to Ron Friedman, author of The Best Place to Work and contributor to HBR.

What can you do to take advantage of this golden productivity window? The key is to establish a morning routine around your top priorities. Here are some tips that can help to protect this time:

  • Consider waking up earlier to take more advantage of highly productive, distraction-free time.
  • Begin your work day by tackling your biggest frog (or most dreaded task). Plan this the day before to help avoid the temptation to procrastinate.
  • Resist checking email in the morning. If you insist this is absolutely necessary, limit yourself to a quick scan for urgency.
  • Push meetings back to start after 10am.
  • Spend the first hour of your day working in a quiet, low-distraction place (such as your home, a coffee shop or behind your closed office door).

I’m not going to lie. Waking up early takes a great deal of discipline and there have been many days when my pillow has won out. On that note, bedtime is just as critical and worthy of protecting. After all, a full nights’ sleep is part of the productivity equation.

I’m determined to stick with this new habit. An extra 30 days of productivity is pretty enticing after all. The productivity boost is a pretty potent medicine to offset the pain of waking up earlier.

How about you? How do you start your day?