As a lifelong night owl, I’ll admit that my mornings have historically been a bit rushed. Waking up is not really one of my strengths. It’s not that I consciously press the snooze button – I’m more so in the category of not even hearing the alarm.

Without a doubt, our morning dictates how productive the rest of our day will be. We need to start our day with the right activities. For this reason, I’ve committed to changing my routine to start my day off right.

On that note, I’d like to share my top 5 tips to kick-start a productive day:

Go to Bed Earlier

We can’t expect to wake up refreshed and raring to go if we are burning the midnight oil. I’ll admit that the night owl in me has relied on late night power sessions in the past. But when we rely on this strategy too much, our productivity takes a hit the next day.

Experts recommend adults get seven to nine hours of sleep per night. Yet, for most adults, the average amount of sleep we get per night has drastically dropped from nearly eight hours in 1942 to just over six hours today. Darwin would never agree that the human race has evolved so quickly.  We simple need more sleep. Set a bedtime that allows for a full night sleep.  See “Creating a Productive Sleep Cycle”

Exercise

We all know fitting exercise into our day is important. One of the biggest challenges seems to be finding the time. Starting our day with exercise not only minimized the chance of it getting bumped, it gives us an endorphin boost that translates into higher productivity throughout the day.

Eat Your Frog

We often tell our clients to start their day by eating a frog. In other words, start with your hardest task. Once you get this out of the way, everything else becomes so much easier.

Our energy levels and our control over our day is highest in the morning. We also have the greatest level of willpower, which is critical for tackling our toughest jobs.

Julie Morgenstern wrote a book called “Never Check Email in the Morning”. This book is based on the premise that it is so much easier to go from a proactive to a reactive task, rather than the other way around. Once you open up email (a largely reactive tool), your day becomes consumed with a myriad of things. We must carve out focus time at the beginning of the day because it tough to reclaim it later on.

Push Meetings Back

We work with countless teams who schedule 9am meetings. They give away precious morning time to something that is often better suited to lower-energy periods. We recommend booking meetings in the afternoon. Give people the morning to focus and then the chance to feed off one another’s energy during afternoon meetings. Where possible, save the mornings (or even the first couple of hours) for focused work.

Even more effective: work together to define department quiet hours. After all, everyone could benefit from some quiet thinking time.

Think Positive

Begin with a positive intention. Start your day off focused on all the positive things you will accomplish. This might seem frivolous to some, but it truly does set you up for a successful day.

Sample of a Productive Morning

6:30am Exercise

7-8:30am Get ready for work, Eat breakfast, Quickly scan email for urgency, Commute

8:30-10am Uninterrupted focus time

10-11am Email and Team Check-in

After all, whether you are an early bird (I’m only a little jealous) or a night-owl like me, these are all tips we can benefit from.

Do you plan to change your morning routine? I’d love to hear your ideas and results.