Your entire to-do list can be crushed in one morning! This sounds great, but it is realistic? It’s fine if your list includes brushing your teeth and eating breakfast. What if you have higher aspirations? You can accomplish more in a single day with the right planning, preparation and hustle. Here’s how it works.
Don’t waste your time, but your energy
Take a step back and look at your day. You may be thinking about it in terms hours. That’s normal.
Instead of looking at your morning as a time period, consider it an energy zone. This zone of energy will allow you to do enormous amounts of work.
Here are some tips to keep your energy flowing throughout the day.
Eat breakfast. To function, you need calories.
Get a cup of coffee. It can increase productivity.
You can work in 45-minute intervals. You won’t get burned out.
Try pomodoro. It forces you to be focused.
Don’t schedule meetings or allow interruptions.
Your 3 most important tasks should be on your to-do list
There is a good chance that you will accomplish everything on your to-do lists if they are short. A sense of forward momentum and accomplishment is what the brain loves. Dopamine can be given to your brain in small wins like crossing one item off your list. This chemical neurotransmitter gives the brain a positive boost and more productive energy. What is the result? The result?
Your brain can be tricked into completing an endless list of to-dos. Three is the magic number. You can create a superhighway for progress by putting three items on your list and getting them done.
Give it a shot. You can ride the productivity wave by putting three things on your to-do lists, getting them done, and putting them on your to-dos list.
Refuse energy-sucking activities
Your morning crush zone is all about energy so it’s important that you protect that energy. While you don’t need to be reminded of the need to “protect time,” what about protecting your energy. It’s just as important in this context as time.
Identify the activities that drain your energy and get rid of them from your morning to do list. These could include:
Phone calls
Meetings
Running reports
Email
Errands
Sales calls
Etc.
Don’t leave it on your morning to-do lists if you don’t know when the activity will end.
One of the worst choices I can make for my schedule is to add something like “figure it out” or “plan ahead” to my morning to-do-list. Why? These are open-ended, undefined tasks. To make the most of my morning productive time, it is important to know exactly what I am supposed to do and how long it will take.
Prepare your to-do list in advance
Before your morning begins, prepare your to-do list. Be realistic about the number of items you can accomplish.
It is essential to have your to-do list ready the day before to make it easier to tackle your to-do list. Get a head start by downloading our free to-do list template.
Be the first to conquer your most difficult tasks
Brian Tracy’s book Eat that Frog explains this point in vivid detail.
“If you must eat two frogs, then eat the ugly one first.” This means that, if you have two important tasks ahead of you, you should start with the hardest and most difficult task first.
Mark Twain wrote the frog-eating analogy.
“Eat a live Frog first thing in the Morning and nothing will happen to the rest of the Day.”
What are the benefits of morning frog drinking?
“The most valuable tasks that you can do every day are often the most difficult and complex.” These tasks can pay off in huge ways, and the rewards for doing them well can be immense.
A few morsels of morning frost can make a day extremely productive.
Get started earlier
Start earlier to make your morning more productive. Of
