What Do You Do in Your First Hour?

Think about what you do during that hour after you wake up in the morning and your first hour at work. What does it include? Are you stumbling about like a zombie trying to get the kids in clean clothes and pack their lunches before school, then rushing out the door, dropping them off, and checking email first thing in the morning to go through your same routine at work?

I often feel like a crazy person in the morning, rushing around trying to take care of a few personal things before rushing to work and not really giving myself the time to settle into my day either at home or work.Diving in headfirst, all day, every day. You can imagine my interest when I stumbled across this headline Monday: What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day. Well, what is their secret? A lot of the recommendations seem so obvious and yet I don’t really do them. Think about why you are  grateful to start your day off positive! Don’t get wrapped up in email ASAP! Do the hard stuff first before you lose motivation!

I tried an experiment this week taking from this article as well as other strategies I’ve heard with a pre-work morning Power Hour to tackle a big “frog” in my personal life and then tackled a big frog at work first thing. At least for me, the early morning accomplishments help me stay motivated throughout the entire rest of the day and even if things come up at work or my post-work plans don’t happen how I want, I get the satisfaction of those accomplishments and my slightly smaller to-do list 😉

As a small business owner or employee of a small business, you have a lot of responsibility and time management is important!  Do you have a morning routine? What is your strategy for a successful work day?