 Hello everyone, my name is Matthew Gaddy and I am your engineering productivity coach. Today we're going to be talking about how to create a productive morning routine. Morning routines are things that you do each and every day and when they're done in a certain way they can help support you on your productivity journey. Today I want to give you five steps on how to create a productive morning routine and how to make sure that it is instilled consistently over time giving you a framework with which to model your days with. So step number one is to get to work early. I know you're thinking I'm at work too much all the time anyway but getting to work maybe 15 to 30 minutes early can really help you in your productivity journey because it gives you time to plan without being rushed and without being stressed. When you are stressed and rushed you introduce cortisol into your body and cortisol is a stress hormone and that can really hamper your ability to focus and your ability to concentrate. So go ahead set your time or set your alarm 15 to 30 minutes earlier get to work 15 to 30 minutes earlier so that you have enough time to go through all the rest of the four steps and do it without being rushed. Step two you are going to get everything out of your head. We're going to call this a brain dump or if you've done this before revisit your to-do list. One reason we're typically not very productive is that we really don't know what to do so with this exercise this activity you'll be able to get all the pending tasks out of your head and onto paper so you can evaluate and prioritize them. So in order to time dump what you want to do is set maybe five minutes on your timer get quiet get calm get a piece of paper get a pen and begin to write down all the pending tasks that you have to do all the emails all the phone calls all the presentations you need to make all the people you need to get in contact with write them all down this way we can get a visual representation of everything you're working on at that moment. Now if you've done this particular tip before what you want to do is to revisit your to-do list. By looking at your to-do list every single day you can make sure that you're making progress toward the completion of those goals. So when things are out of sight they're out of mind and it's really hard for us to work on them. So now that you have a list of all your pending tasks or you've revisited your to-do list the next thing we need to do is select our priorities for the day. When you try to do everything you end up doing nothing. So we want to do is pick three things that we can structure our rest of our day around and make sure that these three things that we pick are the most important the most high ROI tasks that we have on our lists. And the reason you can we our way you can do this is to look at your entire list and ask yourself one question. The question is if I could only get one of these things done today which one would it be? And once you've identified that task you're gonna make a star next to it to indicate this is the first of your big three. You're gonna ask yourself that question two more times and at the end of this exercise you should have three tasks. These are your big three these are the things you want to work on the things that will give you the most bang for your buck if they are completed in this work day. But now we need to schedule when to work on these. We'll do this with time blocks. So things that get scheduled are the things that get completed. We want to have dedicated time for us to work on each one of these particular big three tasks. And time blocks is a great strategy for doing this. So a time block is like we said just a time of dedicated work anywhere between 30 and 90 minutes long. If you start at 90 minutes and you find yourself fading at maybe 45, start at 30, start at 45 and begin to increase that duration over periods of time as you're able to increase your focus by working it out. When did you put your time blocks together? So one thing I encourage people is to put your first time block whenever work your work starts. So let's say you get to work somewhere between 630 and 645 and work starts at 7, put your first time block then that starts at 7. And make sure that it is your most difficult task the first thing in the morning. The reason we do this is because there's less distractions earlier in the morning. People will be getting coffee just talking to other people so it'll be easier for you to not be distracted during this time. And imagine you have not having knocked out your most important task before 9 o'clock. It's fantastic. I've done it several times and the rest of your day is like bliss because that one thing that you were dreading is now done and it's way before lunch. So you want to do your most important task first. The second place I'll put my time block is when my energy is highest. Our energy fluctuates throughout the day. We have morning people, we have night people. Whenever your energy is highest that's when you put your second time block and your third time block is just wherever you can fit it. And each one of these time blocks assign one of your big three tasks to each one and when that time block comes up make sure that you are focused on that particular task. We'll leave this in the step five. Respect your time and do the work. People will respect your time in the same manner that you respect your time. So if you get to your time block time and you're goofing off, you're on your phone, you're on social media, people will begin to not respect your time because you are not. When you get to your time block time make sure that you are focused on the task. Make sure that you are producing quality work during that time and as you begin to do this people will begin to see your work ethic and the things that you produce and begin to respect your time and not schedule things during your time. They won't bother you doing it because they know that Timmy, Sarah, Bob always creates great work during this particular time. So as you do these things you begin to create a more productive morning routine. You'll be able to refine it. You'll be able to create a structure for your days that will help support you on your productivity journey. So if you have any questions please leave them down below. I would love to help you out and I will see you guys in the next video.