Do I need to say it? Probably not, but I’ll say it anyway.

Snoozing is the worst way to start your day. By hitting the snooze button, you’re failing before the day has even started. Think about the mental state that puts you in: you’re practically telling yourself “I can’t even fight the urge to stay in bed, so how could I possibly do anything significant today?”.

Place your clock away from your bed, so that you have to rise up to shut it. Do not lay back down; stand, or sit if you must. Don’t think, just do. Leave the room as soon as possible.

Irregular sleep patterns mess with your circadian rhythm and will make it harder for you to sleep at night.

And sure, you don’t have to wake up early to have a great morning (even though 98,2% of all self-help gurus will tell you so), but for most people, getting up early is an easy way to get more sh*t done. There are two reasons for this.

1) Morning hours are golden for productive work. There’s no one to distract you and your energy levels are still skyhigh. Hence, magnificent things happen in the morning.

2) Late evening hours are often the worst time for productive work. You’ve already run out of steam because you’ve been a productive beast all day long. Hence, the late evening hours are best used sleeping.

Ideally, you would be able to sleep as much as you need to and wouldn’t wake with an alarm clock. That’s the #unlazyway to sleep!

When you check your phone first thing in the morning, you’ll start with a mindset of comparison.

You scatter your focus and damage your ability to sustain attention on anything later in the day.

The information overload that hits you before you’re fully awake interferes with your ability to prioritize tasks.

Enough said? Good.

Fight the urge to check your phone. When you go to sleep, put your phone on airplane mode and shut it down. Don’t turn it on before your morning routine is over and you’ve started tackling your most important tasks.

When you check your email first thing in the morning, you willingly start your day on someone else’s terms. The tasks you end up working on (even if it’s just replying and giving information) end up being tasks for other people rather than yourself.

You instantly become reactive, even though you should aim to be proactive.

Email is like a black hole! Checking email only takes a minute – but you can get sucked into follow up activities, and there’s no way of knowing how much time these will take.

“Lose an hour in the morning, and you will be all day hunting for it.”
-Richard Whately

If you frequently start your morning checking emails, ask yourself: are you doing it because it’s necessary or because your day lacks direction? It’s easy to mistake email as a high-priority activity if you haven’t set any priorities for the day.

You must be on the driver’s seat to steer your life in the direction you want it to go. A simple act of not checking your email (or phone) first thing in the morning can help you to achieve that.

So, instead of checking your email, set your most important tasks for the day and deal with them before checking your email.

Nowadays, much of the news is noise; noise you could do without.

Out of those thousands of news stories you have read in the last 12 months, name one that – because you consumed it – allowed you to make a better decision about a serious matter affecting your life, your career or your business.

I’d argue that there are not many, if any, news like that.

In my humble opinion, the consumption of news is mostly irrelevant to you. 

”Most of what you read online today is pointless.

It’s not important to your life. It’s not going to help you make better decisions. It’s not going to help you understand the world. It’s not going to help you develop deep and meaningful connections with the people around you.

The only thing it’s really doing is altering your mood and perhaps your behavior.”

– Khe Hy

Even if you don’t agree with that, there are better ways to start your day than to consume news.

Science shows just five minutes of negative news can impact your mood all day. Don’t voluntarily bombard yourself with negativity, chaos, and crisis that news tend to broadcast.

And similar to checking your phone or email, reading news as part of your morning routine shifts your thinking to external events instead of focusing it on things that add fulfilment or value to the start of your day.

If it really is that important, you’ll hear about it anyway.