The Power of Morning

Are you a morning person?  Or, do you dread the alarm clock and that is why you wanted your own business – you could make your own hours?  Well, I am both.  Of course, I don’t get up as early as I used to – 4:30AM is now just a time on the clock instead of my alarm going off.  Most days, I do have my alarm go off no later than 6AM.  This gives me time to get a shower, a cup of coffee and head to my office for devotionals and blogging before my work day begins.

I recently read an article on Entreprepreneur.com that said: Tapping into the power of mornings, a time of day when there are less demands, might be the key to increasing your productivity.  For me, I know that I get a lot done in the early morning hours.  I have a clear head and very few distractions.  It also helps me eat my FROG as soon as everyone else’s work day begins which is about 9AM.  My FROG is picking up the phone to make calls – customer care/ pink bag calls or just making appointments.  Getting up early helps me to NOT push this off.

I thought this was interesting: You have more willpower early in the day. Even if you aren’t a morning person, you may have more willpower in the early hours than later in the day. “Willpower is like a muscle [that] becomes fatigued with over-use,” says Vanderkam. During the course of the day as you’re dealing with difficult people, making decisions and battling traffic, you use up your willpower, leaving you feeling depleted toward the end of the day.  I guess that is why I sometimes start with the best intentions to track and stick to the WW program but by the end of the day – it is all thrown out the window.

As business owner (in direct sales), many of my Thirty One sisters say that one of the reasons they pushed for leadership was so that they could make their own schedule and it didn’t include mornings.  So, if you are a habitual night own and want to at least start your day a little bit earlier to see what the talk is all about, here are the four steps that this article suggested:

1. Keep a time journal. She recommends keeping a time journal for a week to show where you may be using your time inefficiently. Many self-professed night owls look at their time journals, they often find they aren’t spending their evening hours productively or doing anything particularly enjoyable.

2. Imagine your perfect morning. Imagine what you would do if you had an extra hour in the day.

3. Plan your morning. Once you have decided what you want to do with your extra time, plan how to execute it, for example, if you want to exercise in the morning, lay out your clothes the night before.

4. Build the habit slowly.  So instead of setting your alarm for 5 a.m. when you normally get up at 7:30 a.m. set the alarm for 10 minutes earlier each day.

So, who is ready to join me in the early morning hours to see how much more effective they MAY be in their business?  Let me hear from you…

Have a ThirtyOne-derful day!