Part of being organized is creating habits that help us get the most out of every day. When we rely on habits rather than deliberate actions that require conscious effort, we free up our brains for more important stuff.
Morning is an ideal time for getting into habits that can lead to a more productive day. Here are five things you can do early in the day, every day, to get more done.
1. Track Your Sleep
After you wake up, while sleep is still fresh on your mind, check how much you slept the night before. If you wear a fitness tracker or smartwatch that has a sleep-tracking function, look at your data. If not, estimate it based on the time you went to bed.
People need sufficient sleep to be able to focus and be their most productive. Not getting enough sleep takes a serious toll on performance. One bad night’s sleep isn’t going to ruin you, but several days in a row will. While the exact amount of time a person needs to sleep varies, research shows that getting six hours or less of sleep, night after night, is not enough for most people. (Parents of small children: I’m sorry.) Aim for something in the ballpark of seven to eight hours, more if you need it.
If you’re not getting enough sleep, how can you fix it? Most people can’t simply sleep later because they have to wake up at a fixed time to prepare for work. Instead, you’ll have to go to bed earlier. Figure out by what time you’d have to be in bed to get a solid eight hours of sleep, and then set an alarm to remind yourself to go to bed. For example, if you need to wake up at 6:30 a.m., set a bedtime alarm for 10:30 p.m.
2. Review Your Calendar and To-Do List
Has your productivity ever been derailed by an appointment or meeting you forgot was on your calendar? Get in the habit of reviewing your calendar and to-do list before your day gets going. It helps if you can tie this action to an existing morning habit, such as drinking coffee or powering up your computer. It also helps to set a quick-access view in your phone that shows your daily calendar or to-do list.
By default, your calendar probably notifies you about meetings a few minutes before they’re scheduled to occur. Take those notifications seriously—not to arrive at the meeting on time, but as a cue to wrap up your other work and give yourself a few moments to prepare. Meetings add to stress when they are seen as interrupters of more important work. Try not to let meetings get in the way. If you only have half an hour until your next meeting, don’t start a task that will take an hour.
3. Check the Language of Your To-Dos
How we phrase our tasks greatly affects whether we complete them. Set yourself up for success by being clear and making sure what you write down is something you can actually accomplish.
As you review your calendar and to-do list, be aware of what exactly you’re asking yourself to do today. For example, “Book the corporate retreat” is way too big to be one task, but “Call three possible venues for corporate retreat” is achievable. So write clearly and make sure your tasks are the right size. Otherwise, you risk letting stubborn tasks get stuck on your to-do list.
The problem with stubborn tasks isn’t always our motivation. Sometimes it’s how we phrase them.
4. DND Yourself Until It’s Time to Process Email, Messages
Do you get sidetracked by email or Slack messages? Decide ahead of time, before you even start your workday, when you will tackle messages. Pick three or four time slots when you will look over email and do something with the messages you see. Do the same with business messaging apps. Then comes the most important step: silence notifications or set yourself to Do Not Disturb mode for at least two hours of your morning.
I encourage people to do this in the morning because our willpower is still high. We haven’t yet been run down by other work, which may make it easier.
There’s another reason this promise to not get caught up in email when you’re trying to do real work is even more important in the morning. Research shows the interruptive effects of email are worse in the morning than in the afternoon for most knowledge workers.
If you use webmail and have a hard time breaking email’s temptations, you can block your own access during just the morning hours using the browser extension StayFocusd or another one like it. With Stayfocusd, you can block your access between specific hours, such as 8:30 a.m. to noon, or limit how many minutes you can use the site during the times you set.
5. Watch Cat Videos or Standup Comedy Clips
Think of a few things you enjoy that you can do in about two minutes, and it can be as simple as hitting up your favorite TikTok cat video or watching a standup comedy clip. Then try to do some of those things during a few short mid-morning breaks. Just don’t get sucked into them for longer than about two minutes. Use a browser-based break/work cycle timer, like Strict Workflow, if it helps.
Why? Two reasons: First, breaks only rejuvenate us from work when we do something we enjoy during them. Second, there’s mounting evidence that shows breaks are most effective when we take them frequently but keep them relatively short.
In one interesting experiment, researchers found that a group of subjects who watched comedy clips before completing a series of tasks outperformed a control group by about 12 percent. A different group of researchers in Japan who study the effects of cute images found that when people looked at pictures of kittens and puppies before completing tasks, they were more careful than a group who looked at photos of adult cats and dogs or neutral objects.
So think of something relatively quick that you enjoy, whether it’s checking sports scores online or treating yourself to a fresh coffee, and don’t feel guilty when you do them during your morning breaks.
