7 Day Challenge: 4. Gaining Clarity on What You Should Be Doing Is Crucial

We are on day 4 – gaining clarity on what you should be doing as part of this 7-day mini challenge on making over your morning for productivity.

In the previous post, we looked at how to find the time in your busy morning to do what is important to you. In today’s post, I want you to consider what it is that you should be doing. As part of this, also focus on what you shouldn’t be doing in those first few hours of the day.

All of us can get stuck in a routine or a rut that includes things that we’ve always done, but that does not always include what would make the best use of our time.

It’s Not About Stuffing More Actions Into Less Time

As we make over our mornings, it’s not about trying to fit more into less time. Although you may read books and articles on time management and productivity that gives you this impression. Doing this may help you in the short terms, but it isn’t a sustainable strategy for effective change. Almost immediately you’ll hit the boundary of how much faster and how much more efficient you can be.

Think about this in a different way. It’s not about trying to add to what you do every morning. It’s not about grabbing 15 minutes for meditation by getting up 15 minutes earlier. It’s not about finding those 15 minutes by eating your breakfast faster. Don’t add to your lengthy list of morning activities. It will just add more stress and rush to your day.

It’s important to focus on gaining clarity on what you should be doing.

Choose How You Spend Your Time in the Morning Wisely

Instead, you should be focusing on what will be the best use of your time every morning. If you can find things to cut out, then you’ll be able to find the time you need to craft your perfect morning.

Here are two suggestions on how to find things you could be doing, but don’t need to be doing. The first is to look for things that you’re doing out of habit. Perhaps you’re allowing yourself to keep checking your email or maybe you hop onto Instagram or Facebook for half an hour whilst you drink your tea or coffee. If you want to spend your time doing that, that’s fine. But if you’re doing it because that’s what you’ve done out of habit, and you want to spend time doing other activities, then it could be time to change things.

The second way to recapture your time is to take a good look at what you’re doing for others that they could take on themselves. Children are a great example of this. We make their breakfast, make their lunch, help them get dressed, pack their backpack. When they are small, you need to do these things.

But once they’re old enough to be able to do them themselves, then it’s time for a rethink. It’s the same with the things we do for our partner. Perhaps you were at home more before, but you’re still doing the majority of the chores that need doing every morning. It’s time to think about lightening the load and getting more help. A few tweaks might be all that is required to give you the time you need to make over your morning into the perfect start of the day.

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