Summary

The website content emphasizes the importance of setting personal priorities first thing in the morning to manage one's workday effectively and avoid being overwhelmed by external demands.

Abstract

The article discusses the challenge of starting a workday amidst a flood of inbound requests and the tendency to let these demands dictate the day's priorities. It highlights the author's personal struggle with work-life balance, working late hours, and the impact on personal life. The solution proposed is to prioritize tasks before addressing incoming communications. The author suggests a method involving setting top tasks for the day, establishing a morning routine, deciding the order of tasks, setting expectations for motivation, and confirming appointments. This approach is facilitated by a "Priorities Sheet" that is kept visible throughout the day to maintain focus on what's important. The article concludes with an invitation for readers to share their own prioritization methods and an offer to download the author's Priorities Sheet for personal use.

Opinions

The author believes that successful people prioritize their own tasks over the demands of others from the start of their day.
Prioritizing tasks is presented as a key strategy to prevent work from consuming personal time and to reduce stress.
The use of a "Priorities Sheet" is advocated as a practical tool to keep one's focus on the most important tasks of the day.
Completing the tasks on the Priorities Sheet is seen as a measure of a successful day, regardless of whether all other tasks are completed.
The author suggests that by focusing on personal priorities, one can actually accomplish more of the tasks that come up throughout the day.

Choose Your Priorities First Thing in The Morning

So No One Else Can Choose Your Day for You

“The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.” — Stephen Covey

When I walk into the office in the morning there are a few things that happen. I pick up my mail from the day before and boot up my computer. Email pops up, my main work applications comes up, and my phone starts up. Immediately I am inundated with inbound requests, demands, and “needs.” It is easy to let all these other things people send me prioritize my day.

Whether you are a morning person or not, we all have to start our day at work and have to processes through all the things coming into our inboxes. A few months ago, this would be the beginning of my overwhelming days at work. I would start processing through all this new information and all of the sudden is was half way through my day.

By then, I would still have a full days worth of work to do, and only half a day to do it. This would lead to me working an extra hour at work, and then one to three hours at home after my daughters went to bed. After working extra, I would have an hour with my wife and then go to bed. Only to do it all over again.

Choosing My Priorities

After I woke up one Saturday morning at 3am in a panic from dreams of work and the dread of going back into my office on Monday, I did some research to try and find ways to alleviate my stress and create more margin. One thing I was finding consistently was this one principle:

Prioritize Your Day First Thing in the Morning.

What I found out was all of the most successful people in the world start there day with choosing their priorities over those coming from other people. It’s great to say this out loud, but when we begin to think about how this practically works there are a few options.

How I Prioritize for the Day

Now, when I get into work, I still start up my computer and get my mail. All my applications start running. And once I am all ready to go, I start with these five steps:

Set My Top Four to Five Tasks for the Day
Set My Morning Routine
Decide What Needs to Be Done First
Set Expectations for Motivation and Inspiration
Confirm Any Meetings/Appointments Scheduled

I keep track of these with my “Priorities Sheet,” which hangs in my cubicle right by my computer. I use this everyday. It is in a place where I see it all day long. This way, I cannot get sidetracked by the priorities of other people.

Start the Day and Win

Once I have all of these set in my cubicle, I start into work. My morning routine typically gets completed first, these are all the quick inbound tasks I need to process through. Then I do the things that need to be done first. And then I start doing the tasks on my top tasks list for the day.

In the end, if I don’t make it through everything at work, but I complete everything on my Priorities Sheet, I can walk away knowing I did the most important work. Typically anything that is left are quick tasks I just didn’t get to or things I can do at anytime.

I have noticed however, when I finish everything on my Priorities Sheet, I complete all the other tasks coming my way as well.

Are there ways you prioritize your day that are not on my list? Does this sound helpful for you? Share in the responses below.

Two More Things

If you want to try out my Priorities Sheet, you can download it HERE. You don’t even have to sign up for my email list or anything. Included with the sheet is a blank sheet to fill in, and an example sheet to help you get started.

Want to Learn More about my 21 Productivity Tips? Check out this series that covers everything I have shared to date: 21 Productivity Tips You Can Use Now