Begin Your Work Day at the End of It


One of the best ways to get more done every day is to make sure you get your most important task done first, from start to finish, without interruption. Focusing on that one task exclusively can be simple, but not easy. The problem usually isn’t lack of effort, but lack of clarity. How do you decide what’s most important?

Maybe that’s not the right question. Perhaps it’s not how you decide, but when. I’ll suggest that the one of the worst times to decide your top priority for right now is right now. It’s usually more effective to have already made your priority decisions beforehand. If this is true, then the best time to decide what your first task should be in the morning is the day before — ideally at the end of the work day.

Are You a Morning Person?

The blogosphere is teeming with self-help posts on how to become an early riser, but most people are not early risers, as determined by their circadian rhythms.

About 10 percent of the population are natural early risers, or “larks.” They wake effortlessly between 5:00 a.m. and 7:00 a.m., experience their peak energy between noon and 2:00 p.m., and start feeling sleepy between 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. About 20 percent of the population are late risers, or “owls.” They naturally wake between 11:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m., and feel like going to bed between 2:00 a.m and 4:00 a.m.—or they would if their work situation allowed for it. Even with eight hours’ of sleep, they feel sleep deprived by early morning schedules. The other 70 percent fall in a continuum between early and late risers, and can adapt to either early or late work schedules without much difficulty.

This means that for most employees and managers, making decisions at the start of the work day is suboptimal, and requires more effort than the same decision making done in the late afternoon. It’s better for them to think later, and do earlier. Work with your natural energy cycles rather than against them.

Set up your first task for tomorrow morning

The more setup time you eliminate, the less inertia you’ll have to overcome, and the more flow you’ll experience. If you need to edit images in Photoshop tomorrow morning, boot it up before you leave work this evening. If you know the first image file you need to edit, open it now. When you turn on your monitor in the morning, you won’t have to ask yourself, “What should I do first?” The file right in front of you is your one-item to do list.

If you were going to email someone tomorrow morning to get information you’ll need later that morning, send it now. It doesn’t matter if the recipient won’t answer it until tomorrow anyway. The point is that you won’t have to break your momentum on your most important task tomorrow just to finally send the email, and you won’t have to remind yourself to do it.

Declutter your workspace

End-of-day decluttering isn’t comprehensive elimination of every item that’s arguably nonessential. It’s getting things out of your visual field that aren’t relevant to your immediate focus. Tomorrow morning, I need to work on a new spreadsheet in Excel, so this evening I closed and filed the spreadsheets and documents I worked on earlier today; that way, I don’t have to sort through them tomorrow to get to the new file.

If you’re not a methodical filer, it helps to have at least one drawer where you can put all the paperwork on your desk that’s not related to the one task you’re currently working on. There’s nothing manifestly wrong with having a messy desk, but if you can corral it and segregate your piles from the paperwork you’re actively using (using at that moment, not in general), you’ll find it much easier to focus on the task on hand.

Estimate how much time needed

It’s usually not necessary to block out the entire morning to finish your critical task. Before doing it, ask yourself how much time it will take, and write the answer down next to the task entry. Whether or not the time estimate is accurate is less important than creating an awareness of the time you’re spending.

If you estimate that a task will take an half an hour, but it actually takes 45 minutes, you’ve got some valuable feedback. Either your time estimates are unrealistic, or you’ve succumbed to distraction. If it’s the latter, you can reexamine what transpired in that time and identify the source of distraction. If that distraction is something routine, figure out how to block or eliminate it the next time you need to perform a similar task.

Suppose the time estimate was unrealistic. Suppose further that you underestimated the completion times for all of your activities by 50% on average. This is a huge source of why so many people experience time famine. Because their time estimates are based on intuition rather than explicit examination, everything takes longer than assumed, leaving no time for things that matter—so they get pushed into the neverland of “tomorrow.” Reasonably accurate time estimates don’t require deep analysis. It’s usually enough to consciously ask yourself, “How long will this take?”, instead of operating from hunch.

Visualize the next morning’s actions

This one’s optional. Relax, it’s not as New Age as it sounds. The point of visualizing yourself carrying out your most important task in step-by-step detail isn’t for motivation, but for clarification.

Mentally see yourself performing each action necessary to complete the task. Visualization doesn’t have to be lengthy, 3-D or in Technicolor, but it should be complete. You’re looking to ensure that you have all the steps, and that you won’t be stuck due to a missing piece. If it helps, visualize yourself successfully completing the task, then work backward to the first step. This will highlight and identify any missing dependencies in subsequent actions.

Anticipate and eliminate distractions

Does your work get derailed in the morning? Where’s the monkey wrench? If you anticipate getting distracted by your email tomorrow morning, close the email client this afternoon don’t open it until after you complete your most important task. If secondhand employee chitchat will break your concentration, grab some headphones and (preferably instrumental) music queued up for tomorrow morning to neutralize it.

Even if you’re not a morning person, how you start the day sets the tone for how the day unfolds. Use the end of your work day to set up how you start your day. Get the planning out of the way ahead of time, so that you can start your day by diving right into action.


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Andre Kibbe currently works as a content analyst for Internet Brands. He can be found on Twitter: @andrekibbe

Discussion

  1. Bogdan Pop on the 16th January

    A few months ago I used to plan out the day first thing in the morning. I then started to make next day’s todo list late in the evening before, and the productivity improved by around 15% to 25%. It really helps jumping into heavy work first thing in the morning, or whenever the usual work hours start.

  2. Jason Finnerty on the 16th January

    Great post Andre,

    I have found that setting up my to-do list the day before gives me some closure on the current day, and a plan for the next.
    The scrambling around trying to figure out what to do for the day used to be an unproductive 1/2 hour leading into a day of juggling projects. Now, that same 30 minutes the night before lets me figure out when, and what, I need to do for the next day.
    The extra time means more time to read WorkAwesome – yay for me!

    thanks for the good read, really enjoying your articles.

    Jason
    @brandscaping

  3. Heather on the 16th January

    Great post, as always (says the lurker :P)

    I think I’ll try switching to this method. At the moment, I tend to plan my week out on a Sunday; it works well enough for the first day or two but then things fall apart. I still get about 2/3 of my work done for the week, but I end up rushing it and pushing aside important personal projects as a result!

    Not ideal. Lets see if this works better 🙂

  4. Dawn Casserly on the 16th January

    A great article, and makes perfect sense, a good read for people experiencing productivity problems, as I do from time to time!

  5. Thera on the 16th January

    As an owl, it is the contrary, I’m better off planning anything creative or important to the afternoon or evening in order to have a clear head; it’s like living with constant 8-hours jetlag.

  6. Taylor on the 21st January

    I like this thinking – in taking it one step further:

    I’ve found people are more productive and better problem solvers when they have less time to accomplish something. So, trying to squeeze an important task in at the end of the tends to yield some surprising results. By the end of the working day, you’re definitely in the correct head-space to know what you’re priorities are and can work more effectively if needed.

    Sure, this might leave you twiddling your thumbs the next morning while you figure out what the day requires – but if you’re like me (not a morning person) then this is an ideal way to get work done during the week.

  7. Don Gilbert on the 23rd January

    Just wanted to say – GREAT ARTICLE! I came across it in my Google reader through Lifehacker – but I’m subscribing direct after this one.

    One of my biggest problems in the morning is getting rolling once I first get there. These tips should really help.

    Thanks,
    Don

  8. Stephanie Cockerl on the 24th January

    It is always a constant battle for me to plan ahead. It comes and goes in waves, pretty much like my writing. Being a night owl also, I’m better off doing passive stuff like reading feeds and email in the morning, so that in the afternoon, I can hit the ground running.

  9. DanGTD on the 24th January

    Great tip. It really builds momentum if you start the task the previous day. However, because the task is unfinished and lingers on your mind, there might be some problems with relaxing that day. I guess it’s not great for yor life to do this as a regular practice, just from time to time with important/urgent projects.

  10. Rick on the 30th January

    I’m 34 and have worked at several companies (both small & massive in size). The only thing this kind of productivity in the workplace this leads to eventually is an expectation of more in my experience. The more organized & efficient I got the more crap was eventually piled up on me. Not all the companies did this at first, but over time they all came to rely on it.

    I’m not saying don’t be efficient and work better – I’m advocating for keeping this to yourself and still acting like you’re very very busy. If your IT department (if you have one) has so much crap on your computer that it takes 20 minutes just to turn on and settle down on the desktop, don’t waste your personal time the night before trying to compensate for this – or at least make up for the stress & bother by going into the office the next morning and doing something personal and pretend you’re waiting for your computer to boot.

  11. Matthew Cornell on the 4th February

    “Set up your first task for tomorrow morning” – I agree completely. The biggest single enhancement to GTD – a kind of missing link – is implementing a daily planning practice. It helps me finish the day feeling full of accomplishment. I made it into a product, which I call (slightly tongue in cheek 🙂 “Where the !@#% did my day go? The ultimate guide to making every day a great workday”. It’s at http://matthewcornell.org/products.html#where-did-my-day-go if you’re interested. Happy working!

  12. Jens P. Berget on the 8th February

    The last thing I do before I go to bed, is to plan the next day. Well, I start the planning the last 30 minutes before going home from work. Then, I’ll add a few extra thoughts just before going to bed.

    It works great, and I always put the most important task to accomplish at the top of my list.

    Great advice.

  13. Martyna Bizdra on the 12th August

    hallo

    yessss
    and also the essential passion and purpose. that is the fuel.
    of course you may say
    what I do is to rearrange my goal, every few days, when I am more clear on the time I need for every specific action.

    grazie amigo
    M.

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