Do You Most Important Tasks First

How do you tend to start off your days? Do you typically wake up slowly, take your time to get ready, and when you eventually start work you “warm up” with easy things like email, trivial tasks, or planning your day?

In reality you don’t need to “warm up” to start your day. Once you’re fully awake, maybe after a cup of coffee, a cold shower, or a quick exercise, you are ready to dive into your most difficult and important work for the day.

First thing in the morning is when we have the most will power. You are fresh and can sit down and complete your most difficult work most effectively. We all know the feeling when the afternoon comes around and we can barely get ourselves to do anything, let along the most important and difficult tasks of our day, especially if we have been procrastinating on them all day.

Now let’s discuss all the things you can do to ensure you are making the most of your mornings when working on your most important task.

Wake up early

By waking up early you will allow yourself to work on your most important thing distraction free. You will be amazed at how fast you can complete your work when you are fully focused and not getting distracted.

I wake up early enough so that I can work on, and 9/10 times finish, my most important task before anyone else would need me for anything. And since I have completed the most important thing for that day, I can address all of the random things that pop up stress free, and fully focus on them because I already finished my most important work. This also helps me to address the little things that come up throughout the day more effectively and efficiently because I can give it my full attention.

Determine your most important thing the night before

Take a few minutes the night before to determine exactly what you will work on, and what you are trying to accomplish.

By taking time the night before to determine these things instead of doing it the morning of, you first off save yourself some of your most effective working time. It will take you less time the night before to determine what your most important work is, because you will still remember everything that has happened, and you still have in the front of your mind what it is that you need to accomplish the next day.

Just knowing what it is that you need to do in a day is extremely helpful on its own. Knowing what it is you are trying to accomplish will allow you to know when you have completed your task. This will help you stay focused because you know exactly what the finish line is, and you can see it, so you will work that much harder to try and achieve it.

If you are working on a something that will take a long time to complete this step is crucial. If you don’t set up a small goal to achieve each day you will get lost in everything that has to be done and you will lose your effectiveness.

Set aside a specific amount of time to work on your most important thing

It is important that you have a defined time slot where you will work on your most important thing. Say you set aside 1.5 hours every morning to work on it, but your task only takes you 30 min. That’s not a free pass to waste the next hour, its time to figure out what your next most important task is and address that.

By setting aside a specific amount of time you will also be giving yourself a deadline, and that will invoke Parkinson’s Law, which states that “Work expands to fill the time available for its completion”. By giving yourself a hard deadline, you will be more likely to finish your most important thing in that time, whereas if you didn’t have a deadline the task would likely take much longer.

Make sure the task is moving you forward in life or in your career

You most important task isn’t necessarily the thing that has a deadline today. Your most important task often times is something that has a long-term time horizon. It’s something that by working on it over a long time will greatly improve your position in the long run.

Maybe you could work on a big project that could earn you a promotion, or you could work on a small calculation that is due at some point today. The calculation can wait till later, use your most effective working time on the most important task.

Maybe you have an exam coming up in a month that’s worth 20% of your final grade, but you have a HW in a separate class that is due today but is worth less than 1% of your grade. Use your most effective working time on the exam, the HW can be done later in the day.

Now its your turn. Put first things first. Make the most of your morning by finishing your most important tasks that will move you ahead in life. If you do this consistently over the long run it will pay off in ways you could never imagine. Good luck.