It takes a lot to become a successful entrepreneur. You need a great product, a sound business strategy, and a team to help you reach your goals. However, one of the biggest things that many entrepreneurs overlook is the importance of having the right routine in place.
Developing a positive morning routine that helps optimize your focus and keeps your eye on the prize could be essential to reaching your goals as a business owner. After all, with your own business to run, it’s essential to ensure that you can squeeze as much productivity as possible out of every day.
Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all system for creating the perfect routine. You’ll need to take the time to discover what works for you.
The good news?
Experimenting with different options for your routine could be the best way to ensure that you get the most value out of every day.
The 5 Ways Your Morning Routine Can Tremendously Impact Your Business Success
- The benefits of a morning routine
- 5 ways your morning routine will impact your business success
- Tracking your progress
- Planning your own morning routine
The benefits of a morning routine
Let’s start by discussing why morning routines are so beneficial. Like meditation or journaling, a morning routine is a strategy for getting your mind on the right track from the moment you wake up. Most successful people with a morning routine find that it provides:
- Alone time: Some crucial “me time” before you arrive at the office gives you a chance to get your head around the tasks for the day. That way, you’ll be more likely to achieve your goals.
- Clarity: A lot of morning routines will include movement that helps to get the blood flowing so that you feel less groggy and more focused. You might try yoga, go for a short walk, or do some stretching while drinking coffee.
- Focus: Jumping full speed into the day when your alarm goes off can often make you feel overwhelmed and disorganized. A morning routine helps you to step into the day more calmly.
- Time: Because you’ve planned your day, you have more time to get things done. You’re not wondering what comes next. You have everything laid out in front of you so that you can remain as productive as possible.
- Productivity: A morning routine gives you the chance to build your day around specific and purposeful actions. This leads to increased productivity and reduces the chances that you’ll get sidetracked by less important stuff.
You might even realize that a morning routine makes you feel happier and less stressed. Establishing a morning routine will help you change into a more balanced and healthier person, which will inevitably translate into how you manage your business.
5 ways your morning routine will impact your business success
When you know exactly what you need to do to be productive each day, you spend less time rushing from one project to the next.
A morning routine provides more structure to your day and prepares you for a lot of stressful scenarios you might encounter.
Here are some specific ways how a morning routine can benefit your business.
#1 Clear plan of action
As a business owner, you probably wear a lot of hats. While trying to manage (and excel at) several roles at once, it’s easy to get overwhelmed, and some things may slip through the cracks.
If you make prioritization a part of your morning routine, you will instantly get a clear overview of what you need to accomplish to move the business forward.
Think about what kind of goals you want to accomplish, both today and for the rest of the week or month. This should help you to determine which projects you need to focus on first.
Create to-do lists, and think about deadlines. While you’re sorting through the things that need to be done, remember to consider anything that you might be able to delegate. Sharing projects among your team will make things much easier to manage.
#2 More productivity
Just having a to-do list won’t solve all your problems if you don’t schedule in the time to get those things done.
The sheer number of things to do might instantly dampen your motivation. However, you want to stay productive and avoid burnout to run your business successfully.
That means you need to understand how to organize your time in a way that’s helpful to you. A morning routine that includes time-blocking and scheduling will get some of the load off your shoulders.
You’ll be more relaxed knowing that you have allotted the time for an important task instead of waiting for a chance to present itself.
Also, you’ll avoid taking on random tasks that others might throw your way during the day.
Follow up your morning routine with a night-time schedule where you make a list of your tasks for the day ahead, plan your meetings, and figure out what’s coming next. This allows you to ensure that everything you need to thrive the next day is in place before your alarm goes off.
Prepping for the day ahead usually only takes a matter of minutes, but it can save you much longer when you’re tired and groggy in the morning.
#3 Better decision-making
Taking a few minutes every morning to look at your to-do list will provide you with a clear timetable for the day, week, or month. Another benefit is that you get the chance to reflect on your overarching business goals, and the decisions you make on a daily basis.
For example, if you see that your schedule is already bursting at the seams, you might want to decide against taking on new responsibilities or clients.
A busy schedule might indicate bottlenecks in your daily operations, so you might decide to hire a new team member to take over some of the workload.
Also, if you’re stressed and under pressure because of time and budget, you’ll sometimes make impulsive decisions that could cost you a lot of money or harm your business in other ways.
Taking some time in the morning to look at your goals while you’re relaxed and level-headed will prepare you mentally for weighing the pros and cons of every step you take.
#4 More time at your disposal
Time is one of the most precious resources we have, and it seems like we never have enough of it. Even if you have mastered the art of time management, sometimes you’ll find yourself wishing for more than 24 hours in your day.
New York Times reporter Benjamin Spall interviewed 300 people over a span of five years, to find out what they do in the morning to help them achieve their goals. He found that the majority of successful people set their alarms for earlier in the morning.
This is not to say that you suddenly have to start getting up at 4 AM every morning. However, try setting your alarm for fifteen minutes earlier than usual and give yourself time to get used to the shift.
This will give you more time to “wake up” before jumping into work, so you’re able to start tackling more demanding tasks immediately. Often referred to as “Eating the Frog;” this process focuses on tackling the hardest things on your schedule first, when you’re freshest and most focused.
Read: The Science Of Motivation: Why We Lose It And Where To Find it (17 Tricks To Motivate Yourself)
Additionally, accomplishing something tough gives you a dopamine rush that keeps you feeling productive for the rest of the day. When you accomplish something hard first thing in the morning, every other task can feel a lot easier.
Getting up a little bit earlier in the morning will make you feel like you are one step ahead, which can drastically boost your confidence and motivation.
Even if it’s just fifteen minutes a day, you can use these extra fifteen minutes to answer some calls or emails or have a productive chat with employees or customers. This could lead to a more engaged workforce or better customer relationships.
Lastly, taking the time in the morning to reflect on the previous day can show you where you lose time so that you can look for ways to improve, delegate, or eliminate those time wasters.
#5 Setting bigger goals
Many times, achieving your business goals doesn’t mean that you need to work harder, but smarter.
It’s easy to find yourself being busy, but not getting anywhere. Eventually, the frustration will build up, and negatively impact your mental and emotional capacity to drive your business to where you want it to be.
Make it part of your morning routine to visualize where you are now and where you want to be in six months or a year. You can write this down in a journal, and then reverse engineer the steps it would take to get there.
This could benefit your business in several ways.
First, you’ll feel more motivated to reach your goals when you have a clear map that will take you there.
Second, it might help you eliminate aspects of your business that are taking up resources but are not contributing to your success. This ties in with the decision-making process mentioned above.
And, last, it might rekindle your passion once you see that you don’t have to run your business on a monotonous cycle, but have a clear blueprint for growth.
Make it a part of your morning routine to look at goals you have set for yourself, and soon you’ll find yourself on the right path.
Read: 8 Steps To Achieve Anything You Want In Life
Tracking your progress
Tracking your progress will always be one of the best ways to ensure that you’re getting the most out of your routine.
Tracking your accomplishments and how successful your schedule is will help you do a number of things.
First, it will keep you motivated and inspired by showing you first-hand what you can accomplish with the right system.
Second, tracking your progress can highlight some of the things in your current schedule that just aren’t working for you.
For instance, if you love your morning meditation session, but you find it’s difficult to do at the time you wake up now, you might need to set your alarm for a little earlier.
You can use a journal to make notes each day about what’s been positive and negative about your schedule.
Planning your own morning routine
A morning routine is more than just a good way to give more structure to your life. The better you plan your mornings, the easier it will be to jump into each day with the right attitude and the correct focus.
As you get used to your morning routine, you might find that you’re accomplishing more each day, or simply dealing with less stress as a result of not rushing around as much. All of this will inevitably put you on the right track to achieving your business goals.
It’s no wonder that many leading entrepreneurs around the world consider their routine to be one of the key elements of their success.
What about you? What does your morning routine look like?
Contributor: Ashley Wilson:
A digital nomad and writer, specialized in business and tech topics. She enjoys yoga, good movies, and trying out new food. Find her on Twitter.
I would clap a thousand times for this if I could! My life changes when my morning routine did. I used to throw myself out of bed and into the day feeling overwhelmed, frazzled, etc. This is a super great article with many ideas on why it’s helpful and what things people can do. Great post.
Before I read this i didn’t realize a morning routine was so important! I will definitely now be looking at mine and where i can improve it!
A morning/evening ritual (or whatever time frame works for you) will not guarantee success unless you ACT. Your productivity is closely related to what you believe about yourself and your mental state of being for each day. Some entrepreneurs go by a planner, but others are true to themselves to know to work with other people. Some schools of thought may say that it is impossible to be great at everything, but you can learn a very new skill from scratch because you know what you want to accomplish in life.
Just incorporate it in your daily ritual, then go and do it practically then you will see the success detailed in this post.
H Emma
I SO agree with everything in this post. My morning time is super important to me – these past few weeks when we were all home – not having a quiet ME time before I start my day was the hardest thing to get used to. My day truly is impacted by the way I start it – some really great tips in this post. Thank you for sharing.
Indeed! That first hour of my day really affects the entire day for me too. Glad this has resonated with you Madi!
This was a really interesting read because for the most part im not often awake in the mornings – I might have to change that!
I also wake up at different times of day, due to awful sleeping patterns, but I find that I’m at my best when I wake at dawn or around that time of day! ??
It’s definitely quiet in the morning around here. A good time to get things done! It helps me to start my day with a yoga routine. I feel centered and energetic for hours.
I love having a routine in the morning! Gives me time for clarity and to relax before going into work.
Same here! A morning routine really sets my day right.