If you want to increase your efficiency and organization at work, there’s an easy first step. It doesn’t require you to learn anything new. It doesn’t cost a dime. In fact it won’t take much effort at all, except for the mental discipline to do it.
Start waking up ½ hour earlier every day.
If you are employed, arrive at work early. By arriving before everybody else, you show initiative. It is usually quieter in the morning. If you have a pressing deadline or a complicated project that you need to start, your best ideas will come early in the morning. Use that extra ½ hour to go through your emails and answer the urgent ones, categorizing the others for a later response. Do that filing you never seem to get around to doing. Study another aspect of the business. Your value to the organization increases if you can help the business in other ways. If you work in accounting, make a point to study marketing. Write down five to ten ideas, and be creative; the list is only for you. You never know when one of the ideas on your list could come in handy in a business situation. Think about what is going on in your department, and make a list of changes you’d like to implement.
The same ideas apply if you own your own business. As a business owner you will find that your most productive hours are those with no interruption, and you will find those hours to be early in the morning.
One could argue that staying late is just as good. However, the stresses of the day drain you, and you aren’t as productive. Rather than working late, better to go to bed and get up earlier the next day. You’ll be amazed how much clearer your thinking is. Waking up early is like looking at the same problem with a fresh set of eyes. This is of vital importance when you work for yourself and the majority of your projects are self-reviewed. Working late into the night, you may puzzle over the problem for hours and never solve it. Wake up early and solve it with a better idea in a shorter amount of time. It’s a great confidence boost.
I wake up early seven days a week. On weekends I may stay up and start my day, but sometimes I am in fact tired and need sleep. If that’s the case I’ll go back to bed. Before I do, I try to write down a few ideas. Many times they turn out to be my best.
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