3 Questions To Start Up Your Mornings
A new company takes care to plan their start-up phase very carefully. It’s the beginning, and setting direction is important. And every day we startup ourselves, but perhaps don’t usually think much about it. Is there any guidance for entrepreneurs on how to kick off a new day? And can these tactics be used by non-entrepreneurs?
There always has been lots of advice on great ways to begin each day. The common themes are stretching, eating well, and generally clearing the mind out (using music, meditation, and other techniques).
Among the off-beat methods include starting your day with a puzzle, such as a flying alarm clock (watch the video demo). There may be 50 ways to leave your lover, but there are even more ways to kick off your day (and 33 listed here, including “write a thank-you letter” and deleting old emails).
The web and social media have allowed us to create new routines, and the trend will grow as more apps and tools are available. Checking your online status every morning is routine for many. Waking up and checking in online before a shower or breakfast is common. Loic Lemeur of Seesmic blogged about how he starts his day online about one year ago. And via GapingVoid you can get Hugh MacLeod’s daily frickin’ cartoon every morning.
Morning Mojo Tactics:
Start your day – perhaps not every day – with questions to challenge where you are, and where you are headed. Whether for your own personal strategy, or a business, or a cause, here are some questions that may get a useful answer in the calm of the morning.
- What from yesterday should I leave in the past? – and then picture it fading away and moving farther away.
- Will today have a theme… what is motivating me right now? – what mini-goals are you setting to keep you focused?
- Tonight when I look back and ask… what will I tell myself was the awesome thing I did today? – another way to keep your priorities in the forefront of your day’s activities.
Besides asking questions, capture some of the natural results from the night’s sleep. Your brain is in a different state, allowing you to:
- get your stream-of-consciousness thoughts captured – capture a brain dump at the top of the morning so that you can help keep important thoughts from being overcome by the interruptions of the day, and then forgotten
The clip below shows best-selling author Marianne Williamson with thoughts of how to start the morning right, shedding the mental dirt from the day before.
Add thoughts on how you start your day or would improve it.
Another natural song for the topic is the Rolling Stones’ Start Me Up.
[ sunrise photo: © Paul Worsham 2006 ]