The Morning Routine Experts Recommend For Peak Productivity - Barking Up The Wrong Tree

Don’t check your email or anything else that is going to dictate your behavior.

If you start your day by checking and replying to emails, it means you'll just react as new things come in until the day ends or you are too exhausted to do what was important.

Most of us get 80% of results from 20% of the work we do. So focus on that 20%.

Don’t be vague. Specify what you need to get done - research shows that having concrete goals is correlated with huge increases in confidence and feelings of control.

You have 2-2.5 hours of peak productivity every day. You may actually be 30% more effective at that time. For most of us, this happens in the morning.

Those are the hours when you should be working on your main goals. Why would you want to waste that on a conference call or a staff meeting?

One way to use habits to fight procrastination is to develop a habitualized response to starting.

Maybe getting that cup of coffee is the signal that you’re getting down to business.

If you know you can’t do that scary thing right now, do not turn to social media or video games. 

Tell yourself it’s okay to avoid it — as long as you’re doing the #2 thing on your to-do list.