Fundamentals of Working #2

What happens in the first 30 minutes of your working day?

Do you open your day — or does everyone else open it for you?

I call this your Opening Ceremony — the small routine that helps you move from everything else into work mode.

Create some space in your mind before you start. That might be a real commute to work, or a fake commute on your WFH days. Go for a walk, make a coffee, sit quietly — whatever works for you.

The point is to clear your head and get mentally ready and in the zone for work.

Then sit with your planner — online or paper — and give yourself a few screen-free minutes.

Be realistic. What can you genuinely achieve today?

Whether you plan daily or use a one-page weekly view, have one place where your priorities live. If your list is buried in a notebook, you can lose sight of it as you turn the page, or waste time recreating the same list.

Eat your frogs 🐸

Brian Tracy's Eat That Frog! suggests identifying your three biggest priorities — your 3 Frogs.

Your Frog is the thing you are most likely to avoid.

So don't spend the morning circling it.

Eat the Frog.

Get the difficult, important thing done early.

Look at your day in blocks

Don't just look at your to-do list. Look at your calendar too.

If your day is packed with meetings, don't pretend you have eight hours of productive work available. You don't.

Look at the space between your meetings.

Could those gaps become a micro-break? Transition time? Or an opportunity to tackle one of those small jobs that won't take long but you've been putting off?

Keep prioritisation simple

Once you've created your list, use a very simple A, B, C, D system:

A = Frog — must be done today
B = Important — would be good to get done if time allows
C = Could wait — not necessarily for today
D = Delegate — does someone else need to do it?

And then...

Stop.

Don't immediately open Teams.

Don't let notifications, messages and other people's priorities determine where your attention goes.

Taking time to open your day rather than launching into it gives you something incredibly valuable — choice.

You are no longer simply reacting to whatever lands in front of you.

You are leading your day rather than reacting to your day.

That's your Opening Ceremony.