7 Things You Should Do Before You Start Your Workday To Save At Least An Hour Every Day
There are seven things you should do before you start your workday that will save you at least an hour a day! This simple plan only takes about 20 minutes. It will also make you so much more productive.
Put these seven things somewhere where you can see them every day. I actually have them in my planner. And I open up to that page in my planner and I go through them one by one. You can put them on an index card, or sticky note and tape them to your monitor.
These are things that help my productivity throughout the day. You can tweak these or you decide which ones you will do. Here are the seven things you should do each morning:
Seven things to do at the start of your workday to save an hour each day
1. Check-in on your physical needs
The first thing you should do is check in on your physical needs. Ask yourself:
- Am I hungry or thirsty?
- Do I have my water?
- Am I in need of a bathroom break?
- Are my allergies bothering me?
- Is there anything I need so I can really focus on my workday?
Make sure to do a check on yourself and see if you are okay. It might sound like a silly thing, but how often do you get to your desk and become distracted by your physical needs? You have a headache, your hands are dry and you need lotion, you have a headache. All these things can distract you from being productive and getting work done.
So make sure you do a check on your physical need. That way you can actually focus on working.
2. Turn off all but the essential notifications
The second thing you need to do is turn off all but your essential notifications. For me, essential notifications are my computer and my phone. There is nothing more distracting than all the buzzing and beeping from notifications. You might also need to turn off notifications on other devices in the room that aren't necessarily yours.
3. Clear off your desk
The third thing that you want to do is clear off your desk. This is something you can do the night before as part of your end of workday routine, or this can be part of your morning routine.
Every day, I clear off my desk. I take off anything that I don't need and put all the papers away that I'm not going to use.
So, I clear off your desk and try to keep your desk clear. Over the course of the day, there's probably going to be lots of other stuff that gets put on your desk. At the end of the day or first thing in the morning, make sure to clean that off. It really helps, since it's like clearing your head.
4. Close all my tabs
The fourth thing you need to do is close all of your browser tabs. A couple of things that have really helped me with that is pinning important items. When you pin a tab and close the browser, when you reopen it, those pinned tabs come back up.
If you want to do that in Chrome, all you do is right-click on the tab. And one of the options is “pin.” The cool thing is the tab becomes really tiny, but you just see the favicon and the pinned tab will move all the way over to the left.
The other thing you can do is create a shortcuts folder on your bookmarks bar. These are shortcuts that lead you directly to things that you want to check. For example, I used to go to Facebook and get distracted by the stuff in my feed. I’d get caught up and then 15 minutes later, I’d remember that I came to check the ad manager.
Now I have a shortcut directly to my ads manager. I also have one directly to my Facebook notifications. Instead of going in and starting to get lost in the feed, I just go straight to my notifications. Go to your notifications on Facebook and press show all. This will brings up a web page: https://www.facebook.com/notifications. Then bookmark this page as a favorite page.
If you have sites where you get lost, create shortcuts for them. You don't have to have all the things open all the time. That really helps clear your head. It’s amazing.
5. Put on my diffuser
The fifth thing you can do is put on your diffuser. I'm a big fan of essential oils. They help my allergies, anxiety and help me to just calm down.
I never had issues with anxiety until I had my son. Then it's like a mom thing. Sometimes you just need a little boost to your motivation, or you're a little bit tired. So you can put something in the diffuser. (If you'd like to know more about diffusers or anything else, head to AskKristin.net. You can ask your questions there.)
6. Meditate/Pray
The sixth thing you can do is take a few minutes to either meditate or pray. I know that not all of you are into that, but you could just deep breathe for a couple of seconds. It will really help you recenter yourself before turning your attention to work.
So just take a deep breath. When you breathe in and then release the breath, you’ll feel your shoulders go down and release all the tension in your body.
At that point, you might meditate a little bit. I love doing gratitude meditation where I just talk about the things that I'm grateful for. When I do that, to me, it's the same thing as praying. I'm thanking God for all the goodness of my life so for me, it's kind of the same thing. I'm sending up what I need for today, the kind of guidance that I need, I'm being grateful for what I have, the blessings that we have in our life, and our business, and all the things.
It doesn't have to be a time-consuming event. I think a lot of people think they don't have time for that in the morning. It can be a minute. Brendon Burchard says to take 10 deep breaths. That's all it has to be. It doesn't have to be crazy.
7. Spend 10 minutes with your planner to help save an hour each day
The last thing you should do is spend 10 minutes in your planner.
I've used all sorts of planners. I've used the Passion Planner. Now I'm trying out the Full Focus Planner this quarter. I've also used Brendon Burchard's planner. The Full Focus Planner has the best of both of those.
The Full Focus Planner really ties your annual, quarterly, weekly, and daily goals together. It really helps with planning.
I also keep an electronic calendar. Even though I use an electronic calendar, I write my schedule down in my planner because when you physically write things down, it cements them in your brain.
After you've written things down in your planner this will be the flow of your day. Write down the big three items you have to get done. And then write down the tasks you need to get done. If all you can get done are your big 3 items done, you will have a great day!
This whole routine takes about 20 minutes to do. Most of that time is actually sitting with your planner for the day. But those 20 minutes will save you so much time just because you've prepared yourself to sit at your desk and be productive.
Links mentioned
Passion Planner – Get 10% off your first order
