4 Effective Ways to Polish Up Your Morning Routine For A More Productive Day

How many cups do you take? I might share a little of my carafe with you! I am the opposite of a morning person - I mean the polar opposite. I could easily stay up until 2 am and start my days around 10 am but unfortunately that is not the way the office world always works. Anyone else find that mornings fly by without having much to show for it?  Some people may thrive in the mornings, but others like me can find it difficult to get settled in and those precious first few hours of the day become lost. It takes some work to ensure a productive morning, but once you form a new routine, you’ll soon find your working day becomes a lot less stressful. Take a look at these four tips on how to polish routine up your morning for a more productive day.

1) Arrive for work earlier (or start work earlier even in your PJs)
​If you take some time to settle down in the morning, perhaps after a coffee or saying your hellosto colleagues, then starting earlier can change your whole morning. Instead of showing up on time, make an effort to arrive early, so that you can get those things out of the way before the hard work starts. Or if that sounds like the end of you to arrive early, I try to wake up earlier and do about an hour of emails in the morning. That way I do get a jumpsuit on my to do list and at least help others get moving on their day too! See also my tip below.

2) Get rid of the mid-morning meetings
A mid-morning meeting can disrupt your routine, taking up a lot of time during what could be your most effective working hours. Agree to move meetings to either first thing or to the afternoon - this will give you a solid block of desk time to help you whizz through your daily tasks. I know this may be hard but I try to block off morning time on my calendar so only really necessary meetings occur before lunch.

3) Set yourself an email hour
Dipping in and out of your emails each day can soon mean you end up spending more time in your inbox than actually doing the things on your to-do list. To make things easier, as I noted above I set  an email hour (one in the morning and one in the afternoon) to help clear my inbox in one hit instead of dipping into it throughout the day. You can use a tool that creates business documents templates to save you even more time handling repeated correspondence. By managing your inbox more effectively, you’ll free up a lot of time to help you complete your other tasks.

4) Assign yourself daily goals, and monitor your progress
If you work better when faced with a deadline, then setting yourself daily tasks, and a time to complete them by will help you make the most of your morning. Using project management tools, you can help yourself work better by giving yourself deadlines and plotting out clear workflows. Instead of creating your typical to-do list, work out how long each task should take and set yourself realistic deadlines to make sure the job gets done. Stick to one task at a time to help you stay focused and minimize distractions.

Saving time in the mornings can be a great way to help your work/life balance and free up more of your day. Fly through tasks first thing to give you more time for forward-planning and meetings in the afternoons, and you’ll soon notice a difference in your work pattern. They say that the early bird catches the worm, so put some energy into overhauling your morning routine and enjoy a more productive working day. If you have any tips make sure to share them with your fellow boss babes in the comments!

Pic Courtesy of Style Collective #sccon18