My 2012 Resolution: Awesome Mornings

To start out 2012, I threw out most of the routines I was working on and decided to focus on my mornings. A bad morning really has the potential to derail your entire day. I’ve seen that with myself and I see it often with people I talk to as part of Lift.

Eat Breakfast
Eat breakfast within 30 minutes of waking up. When I don’t do this I get less done in the morning and then often overeat at lunch, which puts me into a food coma in the afternoon. This is what I meant by derailing your entire day.

This isn’t going to sound very exciting, but I’ve been using a breakfast idea that I got out of the Four Hour Body: beans. Usually it’s just black beans and hot peppers. If I’ve had time to prepare the night before, I’ll throw in some broccoli. But I almost always just go with beans. It’s as fast to prepare as a bowl of cereal–speed seems to be the key to not skipping this meal. Plus the high protein meal doesn’t spike my blood sugar.

15 minutes of activity
My ideal exercise is to go to the pool and swim, but my pool has odd hours and there are lots of days where I can’t make this happen. The result is that I’m haphazard about exercise and more than anything I just want to (re)create an exercise habit.

So I’ve settled on starting my day with 15 minutes of exercise or similar activity. It could be running. It could be squats, pushups, and crunches. It could be yoga or stretching.

Fifteen minutes isn’t going to sound like a lot to Lance Armstrong, but for me, it’s enough to feel like I’ve accomplished something without being big enough that I’m at risk of skipping it.

This has a nice side effect, it puts my mind on something other than work so that when I do start working I’m fully alert and clear headed.

That last bit is actually big for a lot of people. One of the common ways that people get derailed is that they check their email as soon as they wake up. They immediately get caught up in the details of their email and often can’t work their way back to their top priorities.

Choose priority #1
What is the top thing that I want to accomplish in the day?

For the first day of 2012, it was to drive to Pennsylvania to visit my grandfather. We had a nice dinner and I went to bed feeling like I’d accomplished something (even though many other things went unfinished).

Compare that with starting your day in the weeds and then looking at a todo list that’s full of things that all seem urgent but which you’ll never manage to get to. That’s paralyzing.

Lots of productivity systems advice that you start by prioritizing your day (it’s habit #3 in Seven Habits of Highly Effective People). I’ve boiled it down to something simpler, just prioritizing one goal, for two reasons.

First, I don’t have a strong prioritization habit yet, so shrinking the initial goal creates a tiny habit that’s easier to adopt. Once it’s adopted it can be expanded.

Second, it gives me a better shot at ending my day feeling good. It’s a victory rather than a very productive failure (which is what a lot of items checked off of a overly long todo list feels like). I find that I’m more productive when I’m happier, so I’m always looking for these tricks to reframe things in the positive.

Work Smarter

The morning is the time of day when you can actually set yourself up to work smarter. I’m pretty optimistic about the routines above. They set me up for good energy levels, help me be heads up about working on the right things throughout the day, and give me a chance to end the day feeling like I’ve accomplished something