When you start up for the day it is so tempting to quickly check your email. Before you know it, you are drawn by all the urgent topics waiting in your inbox. Your focus is away from the priorities you have set yourself and the day flies by…..

Do you recognize this?

To break with this bad habit, I’ve created a morning routine that works for me. Perhaps you’ll love it as well!

Follow the 5 steps below to stay productive during the day and work efficiently on your projects.

Step 1 End the day before by planning what you need to start with the next day.

Always close your day, with a list of actions that you need to do the next day. This is your priority list. Whatever happens, the actions that are on this list are important, therefore they need your attention.

Step 2 Get your priority list in front of you first thing in the morning

The first thing you do when you start up your computer is open your priority list or open your planner where you’ve noted down the actions that need your focus first. Make sure you finish these first before you start working on other topics.

My experience is that handling my priorities in the morning gives me the best results.

What you can do is manually add some private actions to your list that you also need to take care of that day.

Step 3 Block time in your calendar to check your emails

When you check emails continuously throughout the day, you probably are less efficient than when you schedule two blocks of email checking. The chance of getting distracted by other topics is gone because you simply don’t see them popping up. You can stay focused on your priorities and finish them as planned.

Open your calendar and block one or 2 hours at the end of the morning and block one or two hours in the afternoon to reply to your emails.

Step 4 Block time in your calendar to work on certain topics

When you want to make sure you have time during the day to work on certain topics that are important, it helps if you schedule them in your calendar by blocking time and indicate ‘busy’. Your team can see that you’re unavailable at that time frame. And it helps you to stick to your schedule and not be tempting to do something else less important.

Open your calendar and block the time you want to get things done without being disturbed.

Step 5: Create a clear project overview

When you’re working on multiple new projects at the same time, it’s helpful if you’ve a clear overview of which projects you’re working on and what the main priorities are of these projects.

It also helps if you can easily see the priorities for a certain day in one overview.  There are several project management tools available to support you in this. For example, Asana, Monday and Trello. But there are many more out there, just google “project management tools” and several options will pop-up.

Some of these tools also have apps for your phone if you like to check your projects when you’re away from your computer.

I created a guide and workbook for you to establish your new morning routine yourself. Click below to download a free copy and get started right away!

Hopefully you’ll feel exited at the end of the day, as you’re dealing with priorities first and manage to get a lot of tasks done.

Good luck with your new morning routine!

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