A vitally important part of getting your business and your life organized is to start your day off right with a plan and to establish a daily routine!
I’m a bit of a morning person, and I get up before the sun, so my morning routine may not be ideal or normal…but it works for me. I thought I would let you know how my day goes. Just in case you ever wondered. 🙂
First thing I do is drink some water! I read a while back that water wakes up your organs and your body much better than caffeine ever would. So I start by finishing off the bottle of water that I have beside my bed or I fill a glass and drink it down. It works too! I am almost always wide awake within a couple of minutes.
Most people suggest you exercise and do all of these various things early in the morning, but I actually find my day goes best when I get right to work. Otherwise I get overwhelmingly stressed out with thoughts of all I need to be doing. I love to just jump right in early in the morning before the family wakes up. I enjoy the silence that rarely exists in my house at other times.
So I open up my laptop after I get settled in my favorite chair, with my feet on a footstool. (And my dog usually curled up on my feet. 🙂
First thing I do is visit my email inbox. I quickly scan for any urgent overnight messages. Barring that, I go down one by one and delete all the stuff I don’t want to be bothered with opening. That cleans up my inbox A LOT! There is no reason to let your day get bogged down with all the emails you are always signing up for. Some are important, and those will stand out. (So don’t delete them.)
Then I look for (and read, meditate on, etc) my daily scripture emails and the Proverbs 31 Ministries email devotional that are usually waiting for me at that time.
I check out any emails that have subject lines written well enough to actually grab my attention and were not banished immediately to the trash. (See, it IS important to write your headlines well!)
Then I begin to open client emails, responding where necessary, forwarding to my business manager as necessary, etc. In the process of this I am mentally organizing my day.
Some mornings I have a few quick tasks to do for my clients, so I get those out of the way right away.
If I have time, I start thinking about my blog post for the day and begin to draft that.
Or I will start working one of my day’s projects.
Around 7 am it is time for my son to get up and the daily argument about “yes, you DO have to go to school” begins. Sigh. This is also the exact time that my dog decides he needs to go outside. So work gets set aside, my son begins to wake up, I take my doggy out, admire the sunrise, pray, relax, and just generally enjoy the fresh air. (In the winter anyway…it’s much earlier in the summer that we go outside.)
We are usually walking out the door to take my boy to school around 7:40 or so. We drop him off and then many days my husband and I go out for breakfast together. We relax, talk, laugh, and have a “morning date” almost every day. It’s nice. 🙂
Then it’s time to get back to work. By this time, my inbox has filled back up, so I sort it out again, respond to what needs responded to, etc. I wipe out any small tasks, then start on my big project for the day. Today, for example, I am working on some LeadPages sales pages and autoresponders for one client and a telesummit site for another.
I usually work through till 1 or 1:30, with a short break or two in there sometime whenever my bladder or my dog dictate it. 🙂
Then its lunch time, take the dog for a walk time, etc. That usually ends the bulk of my work day until later in the afternoon. Sometimes my hubby and I will go out for lunch, but usually we eat a sandwich or something at home. We may go wander through a thrift store, or work on some projects around the house.
Keeping this sort of routine keeps my day grounded and keeps me focused. There is always room for flexibility of course. Some days I am just so tired, so I sleep in till almost 7. Other days I have a non-profit meeting at noon. Or there is an appointment of some sort. But you know what, that’s part of the reason I love being self-employed at home…and yes, that’s a whole other blog post!
So what is your daily routine? Share it in the comments below! Or better yet, write your own blog post about your routine and leave the link in a comment for others to read and learn from. 🙂
Agreed. Routine keeps us grounded and under control. Sometimes it all feels like an avalanche… when I get back to the regular activities I do feel calmed. I would love to add that breakfast out together to my day – think I’ll suggest that:-)
It is a nice way to start the day. 🙂
I like the idea of a routine much better than I like the routine itself. I think I just lack the commitment and followthrough it takes to actually to commit to one, though I’m still trying!
I don’t think I ever actually decided to follow this routine. It is just what seemed to work itself out. You probably do have a routine, you just aren’t aware of it. Once I became aware that I had one, I then said I was going to pretty much stick to it because it does work so well for me. And it helps to ground me, and helps me to say no to fun stuff that a friend might suggest.