Is your morning routine getting you ahead in life?

The alarm goes off, you roll out of bed sluggishly....what is the next few things you do? Do you jump right in and start your day, or do you drag your feet until work time or possible, having to rush to make it to work? If you use the morning to achieve things you probably won't attend to later in the day, it will make your day go more smoothly and you will achieve greater success. Let's see how we can do that:

What would the perfect morning look like?

This question might vary from each individual but it could look something like exercise, healthy breakfast, maybe working on a project you been neglecting. You can enrich your personal life and professional life by incorporating ideas like these below into your morning routines:

• Pray, meditate, read inspiring religious articles or whatever you do to increase your faith and spirit.
• Take your fitness level up....use this time to increase your fitness endurance or train yourself for that long hike or run. This lets you accomplish your exercise plus you won't find a reason not to workout in the afternoon or evenings.
• Enjoy time with your family before a busy day. Take a few minutes for a fun activity with your children or quiet talk time with a spouse.
• Use quiet time in the morning to strategize, plan, organize your thoughts for the day and what you want to accomplish short-term and long-term. This is a perfect time before everyone else is up so you have total peace and privacy.
• Read articles in your field to catch up on current trends.
• If you are thinking of taking a class or online class, this is the perfect time to work on that. Do your online studies in the morning or use this time to study and refresh from your studies from day before.

How are you spending your time?

For better time management, you need to know how you spend your time and how much time you actually waste. Keep a time journal to record what you do as often as you can and this too will tune yourself in to thinking that you can use this time better. So this not only for your mornings but your entire day and week. You can then find out why you aren't accomplishing certain things or why you more tired in mornings, due to late nights. This is a way to find your bad habits and fix them to accommodate an easier lifestyle while accomplishing more.

Work on establishing good habits:

This requires willpower and we all have more willpower in us than we know. Here is how  you can optimize your routines:

• Start slowly. Going into something full speed will soon burn you out and get boring, but if you take the time and gradually incorporate a new schedule you will be more likely to stick with it. Go to bed few minutes earlier and get up 10 minutes earlier. Once you establish this goal if you are working towards getting up hour earlier, then add another 10 minutes until you each your goal.
• Get support. Having a great support team around helps you stick to a new habit. Also be sure to take care of you....eat healthy, get enough sleep.
• Start one new habit at a time. When you have 3 things you want to start and you try all 3 at once you most likely won't succeed. Pick the most important one to you and start first. Example, start walking every morning before breakfast for 20 minutes. Once that habit has taken effect, then start habit 2.
• Keep track of your progress. Forming habits takes weeks, some say 3 weeks, some say a month, but however long it takes keep track of how you are doing.
• Bribe yourself. To keep yourself moving forward, use bribery as a form of motivation. If i walk 5 days this week, I will buy a new pair of walking shoes. If I eat healthy today, I can watch my favorite movie that just came out on DVD.

Tweak it when you need to:

Everyday is a different challenge. You may find that what you thought won't now work for mornings due to a change in schedule. Always do what you love and find time for them. I am aware not everyone is a morning person and some households are crazier than others. If this morning routine is not for you, use this to incorporate into other times of the day. The goal is to bring to life those things you want to do and form a habit of doing them, whether you do them in the morning, evening, or night.

Please feel free to comment on how you form your habits and if you are a morning or night person and how this might work for you.

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Staying Productive After Work

How do you resist the temptation to do nothing when you're not working? It's tempting after a long, hard day at work to just go home, lay down, order food and hit the sack but doing so means that your free time you can use, you're not accomplishing any of your personal projects and goals that you are passionate about. There is no shortage of ways to stay motivated and productive.

Get started as soon as you come home:

Body in motion tends to stay in motion, body at rest tends to stay at rest. Whether a few minutes or an hour, getting started soon as you get home will keep you in a work mode. Once you sit down, your odds drop to half of you getting the next thing accomplished.

Get out of the house:

If tempation is too great and the couch or bed is calling your name, take your project out of the house where you can work or learn something new. Head out to your local coffee shop, library or park.

Take just 10 minutes:

Give yourself no less than 10 minutes to work on your personal projects. If you feel like working a little more, than you can. The important thing is just getting started.

Love for your project:

Pick a project that you're passionate about and that you are naturally drawn to. You will be more likely to dedicate your free time if you are doing something that you love.

• If you pay for a class, you are more likely to show up.

Get some exercise:

Exercise is key to having more energy and hours in the day. Take a walk around the block and you will feel more energized and you will get benefits with more regular and frequent activities.

Not taking time to exercise? Make this the first  into your day will almost instantly have you feeling the results.

Schedule it, keep it!

Planning is  important, so think about your personal projects before you leave the office so you are ready to tackle it when you get home. You need a very SPECIFIC goal you want to accomplish and get started.

Get up earlier:

The earlier you go to bed, the earlier you can wake up and waking up earlier, you can carve out time in your morning to work on a project, read a book, or whatever you been wanting to do. Getting up early has other benefits, such as making the start to your day less stressful.

Forgive yourself:

Realize you won't be productive every night. Forgive yourself and pick up the next day.

Do you have any after-work productivity tips? Suggestions on how to stay motivated to work on projects after a hard day at work? Please share your comments.

Using your lunch break more effectively!

The importance of breaks in the workplace is to give you downtime to refresh, regain motivation and to refocus. Accept the break times and by concentrating on YOU alone will make you a lot more productive the rest of the day. Breaks will do great things for you if you use them effectively.

Ways to relax in the office:

• First of all this means - NO WORK!! If you have 15 minutes or up to an hour, use this as a designated time to unwind and let all the work pressures go. Sometimes this is as simple as enjoying your meal.
• Meditation- Set a small amount of time to disappear and let all your thoughts vanish. This alone can be enough to remove stress that built  up during the morning and you can approach the afternoon more clearly. You can take this exercise outdoors or to your car if you need a place for privacy.
• Lunchtime power nap- 20 to 30 minutes is right length of time for most people.

Use lunch break to free up time for later:

You can still get things done and not be stressed. Remember you're using time to do things that are helping you.

• Exercise- If you have 45 minutes to an hour, you can  use this time to go to the gym. If you do your workout during your lunch break, you won't find excuses why you can't exercise after work, plus you will gain some extra energy for the afternoon.
• Pay bills- Combine this with a good meal and watch a podcast or YouTube, you can enjoy yourself and do a tedious chore. Again, this frees up your after work schedule thus reducing stress after you get home.
• Give yourself something fun to do- Pick a fun project you've been dying to do or fun new app to explore and you will have a good time, and feel good that you accomplished something.

Don't forget to eat!!

Make lunch more fun by starting a cooking club at work. Enlist 4 colleagues and each of you cook a meal for everyone else one day of the week. Everyday you will have a home cooked meal and now your breaks will become a built in socializing.

So go ahead, make your lunchtime special! Remember to always make enough time for yourself.

Other ideas:

• Go shopping or run errands
• 15-30  minute walk
• Go to nearby park

Submit your lunchtime routines or suggestions!!!!!

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