I was always an early riser. I got this from my mom who made it a habit to be up early, even on weekends. Early in the mornings she’d start cooking, cleaning and running errands. Her early riser habit became mine. In college I’d lie still in bed to not disturb my roommate’s sleep or tip toe over to the cafeteria to eat breakfast alone. At every sleepover, I was always the first in the kitchen or living room waiting for friends to wake up one by one.
I took immense pride in being an early riser. Surely this meant I was a more productive human. Friends would wonder how I did it; they couldn’t even imagine being up by 7:30am on a Saturday morning without the obligation to be at work or in class.
Eventually I came to realize that while I was spending more hours awake in the morning, and sometimes had more awake hours in general, I wasn’t getting more done than my late-to-rise peers. We were still doing the same amount of classes, the same amount of work and in some cases the same number of hours at our part-time college jobs.
The important distinction to make was that more early morning hours did not translate into more hours of productivity in the day. As far as productivity goes, I’d might as well have been asleep, since those hours were otherwise spent slowly sipping a coffee, licking the bottom of a parfait, watching mindless morning TV or endlessly scrolling Instagram.
This became a more pronounced issue when I started working my first 9-5 corporate job. The hours before getting ready to head into the office were spent dilly-dallying. By evening time, my energy was low and I’d already found an excuse to put off anything productive I had planned for the afternoon hours after work. I knew my early hours were my most energetic, so I had to find a way to take advantage of my wake hours before 9am.
First thing’s first, we have to figure out which tasks we are going to reserve for our early, most productive hours, and which will be left for another time in the day. The tasks we’re going to accomplish early in the mornings when our energy stores are filled are our most mentally and/or physically demanding tasks.
This includes going to the gym, writing a chapter, studying for an exam, doing our taxes (if you struggle with this like I do), even doing our hard-core gardening and landscaping work.
The tasks we’re going to reserve for our less energized hours are productive but low-demand tasks and leisurely tasks. This includes:
Reading for leisure
Folding laundry
Preparing meals
Dusting
Watercolor painting
Crying over reruns of Grey’s Anatomy
Soft-core gardening
A productive morning starts with a productive evening
As mentioned previously, our low-demand tasks will get done in the evenings instead of taking up our precious morning time. That means any preparations will be completed the night before so that they don’t stop us or slow us from taking action in the morning.
Evenings are when you want to take the time for tasks like picking out your outfit for the next day, preparing your gym bag and meals, fueling your vehicle and identifying the location of your keys. It may also mean tidying up so you’re not stumbling over things or conducting a search and rescue mission for a clean spoon in the morning.
Give your morning a purpose
It’s very easy to wake up at dawn but roll over, throw the sheets over your head and lay awake another hour or so while the rest of the world is still rising. Or to perch by the window watching bird fly by while you slowly sip your coffee.
This is why your morning needs to have a purpose. What are the big tasks you’re going to accomplish? Is it an hour in the gym? Is it knocking out a five page report?
Once you’re awake, don’t lie around passively while the minutes tick by.
Take immediate action.
That might mean immediately getting up, brushing your teeth, pouring your coffee, then opening your computer or leaving for the gym. Or you may do it in a different order. The point is, you’re getting yourself into a flow state of taking action and you’re not pausing to waste time.
Multi-task the morning slow-downs
This goes along with the first point. There are some morning items that won't necessarily wait until the evening hours, but these high-productivity hours are not when we're going to dedicate full focus to them.
For example, have your breakfast while typing or even save it for the office if you're allowed to work and munch. Drink your post-workout protein shake on your commute from the gym. Instead of reading the daily morning news, listen to it.
Then there are other items, like social media scrolling that can, and should be, nixed from your morning. That morning phone call with your mom? Multi-task it or nix it. They might take up no more than a few minutes, but nothing pulls you out of your flow state like a funny meme or saying Goodbye! to your mom for the fifteenth time.
Remember, these hours are when your battery is fully charged. We want to capitalize on those battery points.
Once you get into a routine of preparing the night before, giving your morning a purpose and multi-tasking or nixing the miscellaneou, slow down activities, you won’t just be an early-bird; you’ll be a productive AF early-bird.
Imagine the sense of accomplishment when you’ve already completed a heavy task while your coworkers are still groggily stumbling in. Not only do I feel accomplished, but as an added bonus I feel like I am starting my day for me, not for my job.