How You Start Your Day is Everything

In my Productivity Blueprint I laid out 5 steps to help leaders and their teams get more done.

Here are some additional tips to help you get more things done each day.

1.       Write It Down

We may not realize it, but our brains burn through much energy and attention trying to hold on to ideas, tasks, etc. that it doesn’t want to forget. That’s why every task, commitment, and event should be written down or saved.

In his seminal book on productivity, Getting Things Done, David Allen points out how uncompleted commitments take up psychic energy, each one making you just the tiniest bit more tired, more distracted, and therefore less productive.

Allen emphasizes that the first step to managing your life and time is getting every commitment, large and small, out of your head and into a trusted system, whether that’s a to-do list, blocking out time on your calendar, or an app.

2.       Get a Head Start

The best way to hit the ground running each day is to start the night before. Before leaving your workspace, or before going to bed, take 7-10 minutes to review the next day’s commitments.

Ask yourself: What meetings are essential? (You need to learn to say “no” to unimportant ones.) What do you need to have with you or prepare in advance for them? In general, what 3-5 tasks must get done? Once you have your answers, decide what you’ll do first. Look at that to-do list and decide whether any tasks on it can be delegated to someone else or, even better, crossed off the list altogether.

3.       Eat That Frog!

We all have tasks on our to-do list that we dread doing. For some, it’s a proposal or a blog post that needs to be written. For others, it’s an unpleasant meeting to schedule or a call to make. Or it could be a project that just overwhelms you due to its scope and complexity. Whatever it is, it hangs over your head as you push it from one day to the next. It’s time you end that cycle by getting that difficult task done first before you tackle everything else.

There are two reasons to tackle the hard stuff early. One, the morning is when you’re the freshest. Two, once the big obstacles are out of the way, the rest of the day seems more manageable. Author and speaker Brian Tracy calls this eating your frog, because once you “eat that frog” (i.e. the most unpleasant thing that’s on your bucket list,) everything else looks simple and enjoyable by comparison. Studies show that successful people make a habit of tackling the toughest things first, then managing the rest as they are able. (This contrasts with the average person who works on easy, enjoyable tasks first and then never seem to have the energy, focus, or interest in getting to the harder ones.) Just think how easy your afternoon will breeze by if those miserable reports aren’t looming over you.

Start by doing something about the overwhelming task. Make that call. Pull out a piece of paper and brainstorm ideas for that blog post. Whatever you need to do to gain some momentum and move purposefully in the right direction. Maybe you can’t finish it in one day, but you can at least get started. Whatever it is, just do it. And let the satisfaction of crossing it off your list carry you into the rest of your busy day.