How To Start Your Workday – 6 Helpful Tips

by Karol K.

Some Mondays can be tough, right? There are days when we just don’t feel like doing anything. And at the same time we know that starting is half the battle.

So how to start your workday effectively? What to do to get stuff done and not feel overwhelmed? Well, you can try some of the following tips.

Get up early

Yes, I know, this is probably the most basic piece of advice you can get, but this doesn’t change the fact that it’s true. Getting up early is the oldest trick to get more stuff done.

How to do it? It’ll require you to create a new habit – the habit of being an early riser. This will take a while before it feels natural, I admit. The first 30 days will be the most difficult, after that you should be able to get up early with no effort.

Set a fixed hour at which you want to get up and don’t change it. If it’s 6AM it’s 6AM. Not 6:15AM, not 6:45AM. Pick one precise hour and stick to it.

Start with a warm-up task

No matter what you do there are always tasks that just seem easier than others. These tasks are great for a warm-up.

In the morning it’s often difficult to overcome the initial resistance and get in the groove of working, but once you start, you are going. This is why warm-up tasks are so valuable.

For instance, for a writer, a great warm-up task is writing a personal journal – it doesn’t require any prior preparation, nor does it require any research or specific state of mind before starting.

However…

Don’t start with email

Email is not good for starting your day with. Depending on the amount of email communication you get, you might get trapped in your inbox for upwards of 2 hours.

This is not the point of a warm-up. Warming up should only take you 20 minutes. Besides, email is rarely pleasant to work with, so it doesn’t set your mind right at the beginning of the day.

Move to your crucial task

Every day there are tasks that are just crucial and must be done before the day ends.

Right after your warm-up is the perfect time to do these task/s. If you defer the crucial stuff for later it will haunt you through the whole day.

The best case scenario is that every day has only one crucial task, but if you have more, try to get them all done at once.

Alternate with low-attention work

Every difficult task you have to do will consume a lot of your brain’s resources, so you’ll need frequent breaks. Unfortunately, this isn’t always possible.

However, you can trick your brain into reaching higher efficiency by alternating your difficult tasks with low-attention (easy) tasks. It is during these low-attention tasks when your brain gets some rest, so it can be ready for yet another difficult task.

Check your email 2 hours into working

The 2 hour mark seems to work best for checking email (writing email, responding, etc.). If you do it earlier, you can get caught up in your inbox for a long time and all your crucial tasks won’t get done.

However, if you wait and move to email once you have all the crucial stuff done, you’ll find working with email a lot less stressful. Chances are that you will also be a lot more efficient having all the difficult stuff out of the way, so your email communication with people should go a lot smoother.

Feel free to share and tell me about your workday, how do you start it?

This post was written by Karol K.

Karol K. is a blogger, writer, and a productivity hothead. You can find him at ThemeFuse.com where he shares various WordPress advice. Plus, ThemeFuse is also a great place to get some premium WordPress themes.

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