What's a Work Warm Up?
It’s morning. You groggily shuffle to your desk, coffee in hand, still too hot to drink. Sitting down carefully, so as not to spill a drop of the precious liquid, you wake up your computer and begin to load your emails. It starts simply: A couple emails from your team. A client needing to push a meeting. A piece of feedback from your boss. Finally, your eyes leave the screen and you remember your coffee. You take a sip and what? It’s cold? It’s been 45-minutes and it feels like you just blinked.
Y’all feel me right? This used to happen to me all the time. I’d get lost in emails just trying to start my day and look up seemingly 10 minutes later to find my morning half wasted and my coffee totally cold.
You’re likely familiar with the idea that we spend 80% of our time accomplishing 20% of our tasks - also known as the Pareto Principle (Kruse, 2016). For sales professionals in particular, we can use this principle to ensure we’re spending the majority of our time working on client work, since that’s where the output occurs. But it’s so easy to get bogged down in menial (and necessary) tasks that sometimes we can’t see our way to the important ones!
Personally, I knew I was wasting time at the start of my day by mindlessly scrolling through emails trying to decide what to do first. So, I decided to do one of my favorite things: research how to be more productive and start my days more effectively!
I stumbled upon the work of Michael Hyatt, who writes a lot about productivity. In particular he’s a huge proponent of rituals. For everything. He recommends you, “write down your workday start up ritual. This should include those tasks you need to do on a daily basis, anything that sets you up to win. Now, estimate how much time you expect each of those tasks to take, and write down your total time.”
I did exactly that. And it’s TOTALLY changed my work day. For nearly 2 years now, I’ve started each day (ok, almost each day!) exactly the same.
Here’s what I do:
Look over my calendar
Remind clients and teammates of upcoming meetings
Follow up on flagged messages from the previous day
Clear my messaging inboxes
Prioritize tasks for the day
Brain dump any ideas I’m having onto a notepad beside my computer
All in all, this takes about half an hour. Afterwards, I’m set up for maximum productivity for the rest of my working day.
The big idea is...
Professional athletes warm up their bodies. Singers warm up their voices. Musicians practice scales. As professionals, we also have a warm up period. In order to have effective days, you need a routine that gets you into gear. One that you could do in your sleep, practically on auto pilot.
What You Need
All you need to start is a few minutes to prep. Just like time blocking, it takes a little planning ahead of time, but the productivity payoff is majorly worth it. You should begin with a general idea of how you want to begin your day and how you currently begin your day. You’ll meet these two in the middle and, over time, start taking small steps towards the ideal way to start your day. Eventually you’ll form a habit that’ll have you starting each day with your most productive foot forward.
What You Do
When I began my work warm up, I just started with “check emails”. That was it. Over time, I started adding other tasks as I observed my productivity. For example, I noticed I was spending a lot of time rescheduling meetings or waiting for people in meetings rooms who had, once again, forgotten about our appointment. So, I added “send meeting reminders” to my work warm up. Of course that doesn’t mean that I never have to reschedule meetings, but it definitely cuts down on that time wasted.
Whatever you do, it’ll have to be your own. You can start by copying mine, but make sure you tweak it as you go to make it fit your needs. That’s what will make you most productive!
Things I’ve Learned
Easier than I expected. Honestly, it’s crazy to think that something so easy to implement has made my days exponentially more productive. I started being able to work out tasks much quicker. I got more done. I could see it almost right away. It’s changed my work life profoundly, and was stupid simple to do.
Yet, it’s hardly surprising.
Science backs this up. Science tells us clearly that the human brain can only process a finite amount at any given time. Yet the world continues to move faster and expect more productivity from us, and our brains simply can’t keep up. Implementing a morning routine provides an easy “hack” to get around this. You’ve got to outsource. Outsource as much as you can from your brain and automatize everything possible. Use external resources like your phone, a journal, to-do lists, systems you can repeat on auto pilot to start your day. CALENDARS. Successful people use their calendars y’all. Because decision fatigue is a real thing and if we start our workday asking our brain to make a ton of decisions right away, we’re headed straight for burnout.
High performers have systems. They have rituals and routines that keep them on track when they’re tired, uninspired, or just feeling “blah”. There’s no reason you shouldn’t have these too. Don’t learn from scratch and reinvent the wheel. Start with something proven, then make it your own.
Some people prefer an alternative approach like taking longer blocks to organize their week over a weekend or maybe Monday morning. Occasionally, I’ll block off two or three days to focus on a single project. But generally, I start my day with a work warm up. I’ve found it gets my brain in gear and helps clear my plate for the day ahead.
So, how do you start your day? Are you setting yourself up for success or spending your morning swamped in messages? Get yourself a work warm up. You’ll be glad you did. Then, come back here and comment below to tell me how it went!
Sources:
Hyatt, Michael. 2017. https://michaelhyatt.com/power-of-rituals/.
Kruse, Kevin. Forbes Online. 2016. https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2016/03/07/
80-20-rule/?sh=18538143814b.
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It's time to wrap up our Q2 blog series on productivity! These past three months have FLOWN by. Summer is in full swing and I'm feeling more productive than ever. I'm less stressed and taking better care of myself physically and mentally. AND I'm still hitting those numbers and closing deals like wildfire. Woohoo!