I think I’m already somewhat ahead of the class on this week’s organization point. This week, Regina is asking us to start the day with a series of new habits designed to reduce the chaos of the morning.
One of the first things I learned when I moved into sales was an expression from our VP that has stuck with me -- “As the first quarter goes, so goes the year.” I’ve found that if I get off to a slow start to the year, or month, or week, the rest of the year, month or week is spent playing ‘catchup’. Basically, it’s hard to recover from a slow start! So now we’re applying this principle to starting the day.
I have it somewhat easier than most people as we don’t have any kids so the morning time is not nearly as chaotic as I know some people must be. Many years ago, when I moved back to California from Taiwan, I began the habit of getting up early to watch the stock market open at 6:30am so that is now an embedded habit for me. I don’t even use an alarm clock.
One key takeaway to calm the morning rush is planning the night before like setting the breakfast table, or putting coffee in the machine so you just need to push a button. Regina has a whole bunch of neat ideas that may help you with this point if your mornings get away from you with kids, spouse, pets, etc.
Here are my commitments to an organized morning moving forward:
1) Eat a real breakfast -- shop for a whole week’s worth of real food so it isn’t a scramble to prepare each day
2) Set 15 minutes to exercise -- I’m going to get started with some
morning yoga and stretching (… I said start, it will get more serious
over time)
3) Go to bed a half hour earlier so I can still wake up feeling rested
4) Do NOT check email
5) Do NOT check voice messages
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