5 Things Productive People Do in the Morning

Photo by Cathryn Lavery on Unsplash

 

We all want to accomplish more, to make the most of our lives and the hours of our day. Productive people accomplish more than everyone else, and it isn’t because they have less to do or more hours in the day. They do specific things that everyone does not do.

Yet, few of us accomplish all that we want to. Why is that? What do productive people know and do that others don’t?

I think this becomes especially relevant right now as so many people seem tired and struggling to keep up. If that’s you, learning how to use your morning more effectively can be a game changer and help you move ahead in life.

Here are five things productive people do in the morning:

1. Make their bed. I came across this from Admiral William McRaven, the Navy SEAL who commanded the operation to capture Osama Bin Laden. He says, “Start every day making your bed, which was the first task of the day at SEAL training. Doing so will mean that the first thing you do in the morning is to accomplish something, which sets the tone for the day, encourages you to accomplish more, and reinforces those little things in life matter. And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made–that you made,” McRaven said, “and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better.”

2. Read. Productive people read in the morning. It might be the Bible, a leadership book, but something that will grow them. This is pouring into themselves, so they have more to give to others. At this time, they don’t check their email. The most productive people check their email at lunch or a few hours into work. You’ll see why in #5.

3. Eat breakfast. Breakfast is the day’s most important meal and starts things off well. Productive people not only eat breakfast, but they eat a high-protein breakfast. That means no cereal. You will be hungry in an hour and then spend the day snacking, which will hurt your health, and you’ll end up overeating sugar, and you’ll feel it in the middle of the afternoon.

4. Sleep. While sleep isn’t a morning thing, it does determine the morning. Productive people do get better and more sleep than unproductive people. They go to bed at a decent time (usually the same time each night) and get up at the same time each morning, so their life is more routine. A good night of sleep goes a long way to having more energy and better clarity to conquer the day.

5. Plan your day. All of us have known the feeling of our day getting away from us. That doesn’t happen to productive people. They don’t waste time. They don’t sit in meetings they shouldn’t be in; they check their email on their timetable, not someone else’s. The first thing I do after reading in the morning is list the 2-3 most important things I need to accomplish in a day and then strive to do those things.

You might think you don’t control your schedule or your kids hijack your morning. And that might be true, but as Carey Nieuwhof points out in At Your Best: How to Get Time, Energy, and Priorities Working in Your Favor, you control more of your time and schedule than you think. The key is to figure out what you control and schedule and focus on that time. 

How to Know You’re Too Busy

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A few years ago I wrote a book called Breathing Room: Stressing Less & Living More and I’ve been asked by some people how to know if they should read the book. How do you know if you are too busy or getting tired in life? My response often is, “Well, if you are asking if you are too busy, you are probably too busy.”

But just in case, here are a few ways to know you’re too busy and need some Breathing Room:

1. What is normally easy is now hard. This is one of the first things that happens. For me it centers on preaching, sermon prep, reading leadership books. Whenever I find myself not feeling motivated in one or all of these areas, I know I am past the point of running too fast in life. To combat this, I take periodic breaks from preaching (I try to not preach more than 10 weeks in a row), and I work in books that have nothing to do with sermon prep or church ministry to give my brain a break.

2. Sleep is hard to come by. For many Americans, sleep is hard as it is. We go to bed too late, we don’t take enough naps, we spend too much time on technology and get worked up. I try to get to bed by 10:30. I try to not look at social media or texts after 8pm so that my brain is able to take a break. If you have to take sleeping pills, watch TV to fall asleep or find yourself going to bed at midnight or staring at the clock at midnight, you need to work on your sleep.

This is counterintuitive to us because we think if we’re tired we should be able to fall asleep quickly, but that is often not the case. We have pushed ourselves so hard, our brains are not used to shutting off. We have pushed ourselves past 10pm on a regular basis, getting our “second wind,” that our body is accustomed to it. Getting back to a normal sleep pattern will take some time.

3. It is hard to get going in the morning. Some people are morning people and can’t wait to get going; others are not. I’m not a morning person. But when I find myself having a hard time getting going in the morning, needing multiple cups of coffee to stay awake or to focus, that’s a warning sign. Think about this morning: how hard was it to get out of bed? The harder it was, the closer you are to burning out.

4. You get angry fast. When you are tired, you tend to get angry fast. Your fuse is shorter with those closest to you: family, friends, and coworkers. Your reaction to situations does not match the situation. You get angry at small things or cry without knowing why.

5. You struggle to make simple decisions and find yourself paralyzed at making a choice. It is amazing how when we are tired and too busy, normal everyday decisions can become agonizing mountains that appear like we can’t get over them. Decisions become tiring and life altering. The mood swings we have when we make a decision we regret become huge mood swings. An example for me is I’ll struggle to know what to watch on TV, what I want to eat. As silly as that may sound, it is a sign I have not taken care of myself.

6. Motivation is hard to come by. It is true that you are more motivated and alert at certain parts of the day. For me it is first thing in the morning, which is why I reserve that for sermon prep and not meetings. It is when I am most creative, and I need to give that mental time to the most important part of my job: preaching. When I find that motivation not there, I know I have a problem.

7. You have impulses to eat and drink, and you struggle to control them. You may also use things to calm down. This might be food, sex, porn, exercise, drugs, smoking, alcohol. While these things calm you down, and all of these are not necessarily sins, when used to calm us down or help us relax or sleep or “take the edge off,” we have a problem. If you think, “I just need ____ to calm down or feel better,” you have a problem.

8. You think short-term instead of long-term. You can’t get past today or what is right in front of you, and you feel completely overwhelmed by it. All of the decisions you make are simply focused on right now, and you talk about “getting through the day” or “if we can just make it to bedtime” or “if only we can make it til the weekend.” What happens is this becomes our new normal, and everyday is about making it to the weekend or the next break where we simply collapse from exhaustion.

9. You don’t laugh as much or have fun. This is connected to what we’ve already said, but if you can’t remember the last time you laughed and had fun, that’s a problem. When you are tired, the last thing you have energy for is fun or community. You are more irritable and have less courage. People are draining, and the only thing you want to do is be a bump on the log and watch TV. If you are an introvert, having fun with people, especially when you are tired, feels so taxing.

*This is an excerpt from my book, Breathing Room: Stressing Less & Living More. Click on the link to purchase it.

How to Reach Your Goal of Losing Weight

Losing weight

I got to share my story over the weekend at a health seminar. It was awesome to see the amount of people putting in the time and effort to live a healthy lifestyle.

If you don’t know my story, I used to weight almost 300 pounds and have a 42 inch waist. Over the course of 18 months, I lose 130 pounds and have kept it off for the last 5 years. It feels incredible. In that time, I’ve learned a lot about what does work and what doesn’t work to lose weight, keep it off, pass on healthy habits to your kids and enjoy life.

So, I put together all the blog posts I’ve ever written on the topic.

Being free from bad eating habits, a food addiction (and other addictions that lead to an unhealthy lifestyle) and poor body image:

  1. What to do on “Fat Days”
  2. Food, Weight, and Stop Being the Victim
  3. How to Examine Your Heart/Motives
  4. When Eating Becomes a Sin
  5. Why We Aren’t Healthy
  6. Women and the Cycle of Defeat
  7. Two Ideas that Should Change how We Think about our Bodies, Weight Loss & Food
  8. Finally Free: Fighting for Purity with the Power of Grace

How to lose weight:

  1. My Journey of Losing Weight
  2. How I got to where I am 
  3. The idol of food (the spiritual side of weight loss)
  4. Have a plan
  5. It’s for the rest of your life
  6. The effects
  7. Do your homework
  8. The idol of exercise & staying in shape

Staying healthy (eating well, avoiding burnout, etc.):

  1. Every Time You Say Yes to Something You Say No to Something Else
  2. What I Wish I’d Known About Energy, Family & Mistakes
  3. Making Room for What Matters
  4. How I Structure my Week
  5. How to Know You’re Too Busy
  6. How to do Crossfit on Your Own
  7. 6 Ways to Stay Motivated to be Healthy
  8. Thoughts on Burnout, Sleep, Adrenaline, Stress, and Eating

Making Room for What Matters

Breathing-Room

As part of our  Breathing Room series at Revolution I shared 6 simple ways to create margin in your life so that you are able to enjoy what really matters. If you missed them, here they are:

  1. Get a good night sleep. 
  2. Take a break every 90 minutes.
  3. Control electronics instead of letting electronics control you.
  4. Pay people to do what you hate.
  5. Life the life you want, not the life others want you to live.
  6. Use your schedule for your advantage.
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Favorite Posts of 2010

In case you missed them this year, here are the top posts for 2010:

  1. Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream
  2. Radicalis Notes
  3. Being a Pastor’s Wife
  4. How a Wife Handles Her Husband’s Sexual Addiction
  5. Thoughts on Burnout, Sleep, Adrenalin, Stress, Sex and Eating
  6. Don’t Malign Your Spouse
  7. Someone Pays the Price
  8. The Role of Men in the Family
  9. Why We’re Homeschooling
  10. Leadership Lessons from the Dancing Shirtless Guy