Productivity Tips #5: Morning Practice

This is the fifth in a series of tips looking at productivity. They are being written in response to common issues raised in coaching sessions with my clients.

Today’s topic is:

Morning Practice

So many writers recommend a form of morning practice. It is a key component for the practice of writers, artists and people in many walks of life. It’s such a key building block at the beginning of the day. There is nothing worse than dashing into the day, racing to get out of the house on time, heading to work with no sense of focus or priorities, let alone understanding what the overall purpose of the day will be. 

Over the years I have come across a lot of different approaches to the morning practice. Julia Cameron in her book “The Artist’s Way” has a really useful exercise called Morning Pages, which she suggests should be hand written. You should write and keep writing until you have filled three pages, no editing, no pausing. Just write three pages of whatever comes into your head – it can be blah blah blah, it will often be the stuff we want to moan about. Whichever way you go into this, it’s important to get it all out onto the page. Like a form of self-therapy, these words are not designed to be read back again. The exercise is a way to get all of the rubbish out of our heads so that we are ready for the day. I’ve done my own version of this exercise on and off for maybe 20 years now. 

The best recent exponent of the morning practice that I have come across is Robin Sharma. He talks about the need for a 20/20/20 process. This requires us to spend the first hour of each day in three activities – exercise, reflection and growth. This is the morning mental and physical gym. We begin with physical exercise for 20 minutes, followed by 20 minutes of reflection time. This time can be taken with meditation or journaling, and then the third section of the hour is used for personal growth through reading or listening to audio materials. It’s a really worthwhile discipline. I don’t manage the degree of discipline and rigour that Robin Sharma describes in his book “The 5 am Club” but I do have quiet time to myself each morning where I can practice some of this and set myself up well for the day. 

If we don’t prepare ourselves for the day, get a small headstart and work out how we want the day to be, we will let the day take charge of us and spend it playing catch up.