What the successful people do before breakfast.

Some weeks ago when I was eating a bowl of cereal and flicking between the news channels I saw a (brief) snippet of an interview about city high flyers getting into the office before the rest of the world wakes and I wondered if their time really was that much more effective than anyone else’s.

Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that mornings are a mad-cap time in many households. Everyone’s so focused on getting out the door that you can easily lose track of just how much time is passing. A little bit of web research has shown that there appears to be a gap of roughly 90 minutes or more between when people wake up and when they start the commute or school run. That would be fine if the time was used intentionally, but I suspect that far too often it isn’t.

The most productive people, however, realise that 90 minutes, 120 minutes or more is a long time to lose track of on a busy weekday. Add that time up over a week and we are talking about a significant chunk of a day lost. If you feel like you don’t have time for personal priorities later in the day, why not try using your mornings? Streamline breakfast, personal care and your children’s routines. I canvassed a few friends and colleagues for thoughts and these were the four most common suggestions with what to do with 30-60 minutes of morning time:

1. Play, read, or talk with your children. Mornings can be great quality time, especially if you have little kids who go to bed before or soon after you get home at night, but wake up at the crack of dawn. Set an alarm on your watch, put away the iPhone, and spend a relaxed half an hour reading stories or doing projects with them.

2. Exercise. You shower in the morning anyway, so why not get sweaty first? Trade off mornings with your partner on who goes out and runs and who stays home with the kids. Or, if your kids are older (or you don’t have any) work out together and make it a very healthy morning date. As a runner I know that I prefer to run before the heat of the day and certainly feel more up for the day if I do so.

3. Indulge your creative side. Lots of people would like to resurrect a creative hobby like painting, photography, scrapbooking, writing, even practicing an instrument. What if you went to bed a little earlier three times a week? Skip that last TV show or those last emails and get up a little earlier the next morning to put in some time at you’re your hobby before the day runs away from you.

4. Think. There are endless professional business consultants out there who will tell you that strategic thinking time is incredibly important for seizing control of our lives. Spend 30 minutes in the morning pondering what you want to do with your time. You could also use this time to pray or read a different business magazine, to meditate or write a journal or a blog!

All of these will help you start the day in a much better place than if everyone’s running around like chickens with their heads cut off.

If you do decide to adopt any of these, then why not drop me an email and let me know your thoughts? www.chestertongray.com