MBA954 How to Create an Effective Morning Routine

Comcast Business helps retailers become seamlessly restocking, frictionless paying favorite shopping destinations. It's how nationwide restaurants become touchscreen ordering, quick serving eateries and how hospitals become the patient scanning data, managing healthcare facilities that we all depend on. With leading networking and connectivity, advanced cybersecurity and expert partnership, Comcast Business is powering the engine of modern business powering possibilities.

Restriction Supply Ready to Save on New Tech? It's time for Dell Tech Day's annual sales event celebrating our customers with fantastic deals and benefits. Perks include Dell Rewards, free shipping, premium Support and more. PCs like the Dell 14 with Intel Core Ultra processors will help you do more faster and with a premium suite of monitors and accessories, you can upgrade your whole setup with amazing savings. Visit Dell.com deals.

Foreign. Welcome to the $100 MBA show, the business podcast that knows that you're in a hurry for business tips and strategies. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar mba, a complete business training and community online and in today's episode you will learn how to Create an effective morning routine. How you start your day can greatly affect the result of the day, how well you perform and how much you get done. Having an effective morning Routine when you get up, what do you actually do? When you get up, what are the first things you do, in what order and how you do them can greatly change the way your day goes. If you mess this up, you're asking for trouble. Trust me, I've had mornings where I just didn't have a routine where I really just kind of winged this thing. And as a result my day was really not as productive as it should have been. In fact, that whole day was a wash. So today I'm going to share with you some of my best tips how I craft my morning routine as well as some morning routine tips I've learned from others. No matter what you have to do that day, how you start sets the tone. So let's make sure we set it right. Let's get into it. Let's get down to business. Your effective morning routine actually starts the night before. Being intentional, being conscious of the fact that tomorrow is is going to be a really good day. Tomorrow is gonna be really productive. And that starts with a good night's sleep. So you wanna make sure that you give yourself enough hours. Everybody's different. Personally, if I don't get at least eight hours sleep, I'm not a happy camper. I need more sleep than most, probably. So setting yourself up beforehand, setting your alarm to make sure you get at least eight hours sleep. For me, my sweet spot is, you know, going to bed around 10 and waking up at 6:30, that allows me to fall asleep, gives me 30 minutes to fall asleep. I might be reading a book in bed, something like that. And that gives me eight solid hours. You need to find your sweet spot. I highly recommend you kill all kind of media, meaning tv, phones, things like that. Any kind of screen time, at least 30 minutes, 40 minutes before you go to bed. You gotta allow your brain to kind of relax and get into, you know, sleep mode. Reading is a great way to kind of calm yourself down and it's a really low tech, low impact way for you to kind of ease into sleep. So set your alarm and get ready for a productive day tomorrow. Now, as soon as you get up, how you start the day is so critical. I'm talking about as soon as you open your eyes, when you wake up, when you hear that alarm, what happens now? I have an alarm on my iPhone now, luckily with the alarm app. When the alarm goes off, I don't see any of my notifications. I just see the alarm, which is great. So I can just hit end and I can get up. From that point on, it's really important not to check your phone. Don't check your computer or iPad or anything like that at the start. Why? Because how you start the day, those first moments really are critical. You might see something that's going to make your blood boil, whether it's a comment on Twitter or something you're going to have to deal with today. And if there is an issue or a fire you have to put out, you will deal with it, you will solve it. But don't ruin those first moments. You got to give yourself enough chance to get into a positive mode, into a positive mood. So don't look at your screens, get, get up and you know, have a regular human being experience where you just get up, put your feet on the floor, you know, you head to the bathroom, whether you shower in the morning, brush your teeth, all that kind of stuff, routine, ease yourself into it. I think easing into the day is a great way to kind of start the day. I like to call it my human being time. Right? It's time just to be a human being, right? Not a entrepreneur, not a thinker, not a problem solver. I just want to be a human being for a moment, right? So that's the morning Time you get up, do your morning routine, you brush your teeth, you know, you get ready, and I like to have breakfast with no kind of interruption or any kind of distraction. So Basically, the first 30 to 45 minutes of my day, there is no work. There's nothing that's kind of spoiling my mood. I just allow myself to get up, get into the mood of just starting the day. I get my fuel by having breakfast, having my coffee, and then it's time to get to work. Now, if you're like me, you probably have about 30 to 40 notifications waiting for you, whether it's in Slack or Basecamp or any other apps you're using to manage your team. When I start my day, my first task to get to work. Ideally, I like to really just focus on productive work, whether that's recording, scripting, creating website pages, whatever requires some sort of creative juices, creative ability. I allow myself to have the morning for that. It's a good way to start the day, to produce, to create things, checking email, checking notifications, all the other stuff you could do later. And it's kind of a good thing to do when you're a little bit tired, when your creative juices kind of waned off. And it's also good to. To get things done, to actually create things, to do things that actually affect the business early on. It's encouraging. It makes you feel like the day was productive already. So the first hour or two of your day is really like, wow. I pounded out all these things that really are important. And for me, a lot of that is content creation, whether it's writing a blog post, recording a podcast episode like this, a video tutorial, something like that. Now, before I actually roll up my sleeves and start doing some of this creative work, some of the stuff that will deeply impact my business or greatly impact my business, I look at my notifications just to make sure there's nothing that needs my immediate attention, like a huge fire problem, a code red. Now, mind you, this is very rare, but I like to make it a habit. I go in looking at my emails or notifications on my apps with the conscious intention I'm going to just go through each one, look at the title, look at what they're talking about. If there's nothing urgent, I need to let go of this and step out. So I usually put a timer to myself. I say, five minutes max. Look at my notifications and emails, make sure there's nothing, you know, that needs my immediate attention. If not, I'm going back to that and Usually what I do is like to star things just to remind myself I need to go to that and reply to that email or look at that notification before the end of the day. And 99% of the time there's nothing that needs my immediate attention. I just go through gives me an idea. Most of the stuff I'm looking at is just people keeping me in the loop or their emails that I can reply in a few hours. It's okay. That calms me down and makes me feel like, okay, that's sorted. I'm not neglecting anything, I'm not ignoring anything. Everything is fine. Now I can roll up my sleeves and do some really productive creative work. Now that morning, let's say from 7:30 all the way to, I would say 12, is my most productive time. This is where I get all the best work done. And I like to do this interruption free. Just a serious set of times, serious set of hours where I just pound out as much great, productive work. And this is really possible because I have a to do list and we talked about this in a previous episode. To do lists are great. And I have a running to do list whole week and I check things off to make sure that I'm covering everything I need to cover. And I just pound through that to do list. And it feels great to have things crossed off. Come 12 o', clock, it's lunchtime. And anything after lunchtime is just basically maintenance, answering emails, things like that. And if I'm lucky and things are good and everything's fine and it's an easy day. You finish early, you can finish 2, 3 o'. Clock. But the point is that that first half of the day, that morning is so important. Before lunchtime, I would say I get 80% of all my work done from the moment I start working after breakfast until lunchtime. And the rest, it's kind of like just maintenance work, replying to emails, things like that.

Oh, could this vintage store be any cuter?

Right?

And the best part, they accept Discover. Except Discover in a little place like this? I don't think so, Jennifer. Oh yeah, huh? Discover's accepted where I like to shop. Come on, baby, get with the times.

Right?

So we shouldn't get the parachute pants. These are making a comeback, I think.

Discover is accepted at 99% of places that take credit cards nationwide, based on.

The February 2025 Nielsen report.

Looking for a Valentine's gift she'll truly love, 1-800-flowers.com knows what she wants. For 50 years, 1-800-flowers has helped guys like you get it right. Delivering millions of fresh Valentine's roses nationwide, 1-800-flowers offers premium fresh cut flowers backed by their seven day freshness guarantee plus same day delivery when you need them on time. Valentine's is coming up and bouquets are selling fast, so don't wait on this order today at 1-800-flowers.com sxm. That's 1-800-flowers. Com sxm.

Once you've established a morning routine, what time you wake up, what things you don't do in the morning, when you have breakfast, when you start working, what are the things you're gonna work on first? Again, I highly recommend you dedicate that morning time before lunch to work on things that require the most creative energy, distraction free. But once you have your routine down, it's really important to change things up to keep yourself on your toes. Because things can get mundane and things sometimes are not as effective. I equate this to going to the gym. If you go and do the same workout at the gym day in and day out, in about two months, your body's just not going to respond to those exercises you're doing day in and day out anymore. It's just going to get used to it. You need to surprise your muscles. You need to, you know, really shock them. And you need to do the same with your morning routine. So it could be subtle. So say, for example, you like to have breakfast and read the newspaper. Change it up. How about have breakfast outside on the porch or in the balcony? Subtle changes keep you on your toes and keep your mind sharp. It also heightens your consciousness of what you're doing. Oh, I'm having breakfast right now. I'm enjoying myself. I'm getting ready for the day. When you get into a routine and do things the same way, you kind of lose the intention of what you're doing. So changing things up really helps. Another subtle thing you could do is what you do the first thing as your piece of work. So, for example, once a week I run a live webinar on Webinar Ninja. If you're interested in learning about webinars, you can go to webinarninja.com workshop shameless plug here. But on that day, that's the first thing I do that day. It's not writing a blog post, it's not recording a podcast episode, and I even don't check for any fires or anything like that. That day, I just kind of say that's the first thing I do. And it changes up because I'm doing a live Webinar. I'm doing a live performance, really on camera, the first thing, and it kind of changes the way I think about the whole day and allows me to stay on my toes and it also breaks the monotony. And then later on I do other things after the webinar, of course, but it's a high energy activity opposed to maybe more of a low energy activity where I'm writing something, I'm sitting down quietly and allows me to be a bit more dynamic with my schedule. And when you add a little variety, you can stay more consistent with a morning routine. Changing subtle things really help. Another piece of advice that many people have told me in the past is make sure you get up in the morning the same time every morning. And I kind of just ignored that for years. But we've been doing that for the last, I would say 18 months. And it's really helped getting up at the same time, whatever time that is, whether that's 6:30 or 8:00 clock or 9:00 clock for that matter, it doesn't really matter. It just matters that you actually have a consistent routine. Your body really thanks you for consistency. And obviously what time you go to bed has to be consistent as well, so you can have enough hours of sleep and therefore your wake up time is consistent. Lastly, when it comes to routines, once you break a routine, let's say for example, you've been waking up at 7 o' clock every morning, but one day you decide to wake up at 11 and you break the rule and look at your phone and look at all the alarms and look at all the notifications first thing in your bed. Once you break the routine, it's really hard to go back to that steady routine. So be aware of that. This is especially important when it's not really intentional, like you're on vacation. Be mindful of the fact that, hey, this is a break of routine. When I'm on vacation, when I'm going away on holiday, once I get back, I'm gonna have to work hard to establish that routine again. You have to be wary of that, that when you break a routine, it's really hard to get back on track. But if you are committed to it, especially if you're intentionally doing it so you can take a break, go on vacation, you're traveling, understand there's going to be some effort to establish that routine again. All right, that wraps up today's lesson. I hope that helped and I hope that you carve your effective morning routine with my tips today. Tomorrow we have a special episode. We call this Q and A Wednesdays where we answer a question from a listener. We have a question from a listener asking when do you know it's the right time to quit your job? Such an important question. I'll be sharing my own personal story as well as my advice on of knowing when it's time to make that change. Not an easy decision, but you have to have some criteria to know it's time. And that's what I'll be sharing in tomorrow's episode. So make sure you hit subscribe so you can check that one out. All right, before I go, I want to leave you with this routine is your friend. Especially if you're a new entrepreneur. You have to establish your own routines and be your own boss. That's one of the biggest challenges of entrepreneurship. When you're in a job, you're told exactly what time you have to show up when you're finished work and everything you do in between. As an entrepreneur, you gotta be your own boss. So routines really help keep you on track. All right, I'll check you in tomorrow's episode. I'll see you then. Take care. Lifelock how can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.

One in four tax paying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud.

What do I do?

My refund though. I'm freaking out. Don't worry. I can fix this.

Lifelock fixes identity theft guaranteed and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage.

I'm so relieved.

No problem. I'll be with you every step of the way.

One in four was a fraud paying American. Not anymore. Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com Special offer terms apply.