The “First Thing” Strategy

Want to get more done? Increase your productivity?

Want to get each day off to a better start, make your clients/employers/professors happier, and set a great example for the people you work with?

Here’s a simple strategy that can help:

Pick a do-able, well-defined, and useful task to do first thing in the morning. Not something that can telescope into an all-day fire drill, like checking your email or your social networking sites, but something tangible and productive, like going for a 2-mile run, or cleaning off your desk, or writing a new sales letter.

To make this strategy work, you have to put off until later in the day the kinds of time-gobblers that have typically prevented you from doing these First Things. So you must vow to not open your email, or attack the in-box, or turn on your cell phone until you’ve accomplished your First Thing.

And to double your effectiveness, try adopting a double First Thing strategy: plan on one First Thing for home—that you will accomplish as soon as you awaken, before the morning shower, before the first cup of coffee—and another one for the office.

Try this idea on for size, and let us know how it works. Share your First Things, and what kinds of changes you experience in your work and your life.