Recently, my mornings have become overwhelmed with demands for my attention. Some of these are, of course, inherently important and urgent – like when my newborn needs food or a diaper change, or when a coworker calls to tell me they’re in the hospital and need support.
But a vast majority of these attentional demands are not urgent, and some of them are not even important at all – like my endless scrolling through Facebook (which I thankfully no longer use), reading the news, instantly answering arriving emails, or watching another click-bait YouTube video.
When I start my day with these types of non-urgent attentional demands, I find that the day, and its insatiable thirst for my attention, runs me. This makes me terribly ineffective.
The problem is, I struggle to resist these demands. I doom-scroll my way into a productivity nightmare each morning when I fail to take control.
I love being productive. But with all these distractions, I find that fractured attention is normal and that getting into deep(er) work takes motivational energy reserved only for one well-known, battery-fueled bunny. And using all of this energy to take control of my day is expensive in the long term, especially considering my demanding (yet rewarding) job.
The problem is, I struggle to resist [attentional] demands. I doom-scroll my way into a productive nightmare each morning when I fail to take control.
So I’ve started doing what I call “Morning Productivity Stretching” to bypass the enormous motivational energy required to get going and allow me a little more control over the day. I discovered this approach accidentally by noticing those days that felt very productive vs those days where I dragged my limp motivation, exhausted through. I discovered that most productive days started with one of these stretches.
Similar to active stretching before a workout (side note: running is my jam), I use this approach to warm myself up in the morning by getting the “getting things done” machine running at full throttle. To do this, I simply start my day by:
- Initially avoiding those areas of distraction (email, Slack, Facebook, etc)
- Identifying a few small tasks (often admin things) that I’ve been putting off that I can get done in 5-10 mins each
- Working through these bite-sized tasks for about 1 hour so that at the end I have a small list of accomplished tasks
Once I’ve done this, other bigger tasks are a stepping stone from my productive momentum. I find that I can continue into these tasks with less effort, even if I get inevitably distracted or interrupted.
I’ve started doing what I call “Morning Productivity Stretching” to bypass the enormous motivational energy required to get going and allow me a little more control over the day.
Also, these small tasks do not need to be similar to the deeper work you typically do. For example, last Wednesday, I started my day by cleaning the kitchen, filing my health receipts, and writing a quick thank you to a colleague that I’d been delaying. After this warm up, I moved into a more intensive commercial contract review.
The key here is to avoid (at all cost) distractions by replacing them with small productive tasks. This approach just requires less energy than simply trying to avoid distractions by taking on something that is equally hard.
I’m aware that some productivity experts suggest that you should get the most difficult thing done first (i.e. Eat that Frog by Brian Tracey as well as Atomic Habits author, James Clear, among others). While this doesn’t always work for me, if this works for you, don’t stop.
But as a runner, I see this as counterintuitive. Before I run, I always take time to do active stretching. When I do, I perform better; I need time to warm up.
That said, it’s important that the tasks you select are small in nature and don’t require intensive thinking. I’ve found this to be important. Without this, the task quickly becomes big and motivationally expensive. It moves from being a warm up to being the main event. You really do want to use these small tasks as a way to kickstart the day, not as a substitute for the important things you want to accomplish.
So, once you’ve warmed up and you feel the momentum growing, don’t delay the deeper work. Use the momentum to dive into deeper work. It’s effective.
