I’m a neurosurgeon, and the best morning routine I’ve found only consists of 3 simple steps.
- Morning routines can be hard to develop, but having one can set you up for a productive day and successful life.
- Neurosurgeon Mark McLaughlin shares the three-step morning routine he follows to set up the rest of his day for success.
- He calls it his “triple threat”: meditation, filing, and planning.
It’s easy to feel overwhelmed when juggling career and work demands, family time, relationships, and other obligations.
If you feel like you’re constantly playing catch-up with no time to achieve personal or professional fulfillment, it’s possible to turn it all around by changing one thing about your day: your morning routine.
There’s a reason successful people tend to be early risers— think Tim Cook or Oprah. The quiet early morning hours are a key time for focusing on a set of routines that start your day off right, before the rest of the world wakes up and has the potential to throw you off course. If your morning routine isn’t designed to maximize productivity, then you’re missing an opportunity to boost your performance in both life and business.
As a busy neurosurgeon, wrestling coach, author, speaker, and dad, my morning routine is the secret to my success. It consists of only three simple steps that set the rest of my day up for productivity — I call it my triple threat:
1. Meditating
I awake each day at 5:00 a.m. and meditate for 10 minutes, without fail. This is a non-negotiable self-care aspect of my day, which is why it comes before everything else.
I was fortunate to learn transcendental meditation— which involves silently reciting a mantra over and over — from instructors John Hanlon and Dean Sluyter, who’s author of several outstanding books and audio meditations, at the Pingry School back in 1980. However, over the years, my technique has changed to natural meditation— which does not require the use of a mantra. It is more centered on quiet inactivity.
Meditation — or mindfulness practices — can help reduce your stress levels and avoid burnout, improve your mental health and well-being, boost your creativity levels, enhance your capacity for empathy, improve sleep and so much more.
Try at least 10 minutes of meditation to start your day and discover what it enhances in your life.
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2. Filing
This sounds like a real 180-degree turn, right? Going from relaxing and focus-enhancing meditation to…filing? Hear me out.
I’ve created a personal file system labeled for each day of the month, and every day has one task in that file. When something pops up during my day that’s not urgent, I file it away in this system and don’t think about it again until its designated day. For example, I might wake up one morning, check my file, and see that today’s task is to write a thank-you note to a friend. I can check this off my list and move on with my day.
Create a similar daily filing system for yourself to remove the stress of all of the little “to-dos” that can easily pile up and overwhelm you.
3. Planning
Planning calendar as a concept
Starting your day without a set plan is like running a race with no idea of the route or destination: You might get there eventually, but you’re going to be stressed, exhausted, and certainly lagging behind everyone else.
That’s why the third element to my “triple threat” morning routine is consulting my day planner and making a list of everything I need to get done that day before it all has a chance of going sideways. Though most things have gone digital these days, I personally use a classic paper Franklin planner. There are benefits to keeping a paper day planner, including increased mindfulness and memory retention.
Mapping out your day before it begins each morning doesn’t mean it won’t go off course, but it will help keep you focused on your goals and give you a better shot of actually achieving them.
Lastly, try different morning routines until you land on one that works for you. While it doesn’t have to be complicated, it does need to be intentional and tailored to your needs in order to help you have a more productive, successful day.
Dr. Mark McLaughlin, MD, practices neurological surgery at Princeton Brain and Spine Care and believes that we can all use the core principles behind brain surgery and apply them to our daily lives. His mission is to utilize the lessons he has learned from his career to help others manage stressful situations and engage with problem-solving.
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Depending on your situation having your own space to work from is critical for your productivity and organization. It could be like this one tucked into a small corner in a room or using a large closet or clearing a corner in that overfilled garage. This gives you the psychological advantage of having an actual “place” to go where you do your work. It also gives you a space to keep all your tools for working online, including any hard copy files, and your computer. This saves on time and effort. If you are using the kitchen table once everyone is out of the house, you need to clear off the surface them got fetch all the items you need to get to work. This can be a big disincentive to actually getting to work. Without that workspace to go to each day, it can create a huge disincentive and create procrastination things you want to avoid if your time online is to be productive.
This falls under the category of discipline. If you are used to going to a job or still do, working from home can seem quite liberating, until you realize you’ve spent the whole day outside gardening, or baking, or shopping! That’s why you need to set a start time to be at your home office. Obviously, this could change from day to day. If you have a job outside the home and you have different start days, it would be beneficial to put a start time in your calendar to remind you what time you need to be at your home office. The more you treat working from home just like any other business or job the better your results are going to be. Make the time you spend at your home office realistic. Unrealistic plans can be counterproductive. When you first start doing this you might find it a bit of a juggling act. But stick to it. Even if you don’t always sit down when you plan to, be persistent in setting the time you will be at your desk. Failing to use this strategy can often lead to the loss of the vision you had when you decided working from home in your own business would be the answer to living a life of your dreams.
It’s best to set that scheduled time to be at your home office around a time when you are less likely to face family interruptions. But you also need to get an agreement with family members. Set some basic parameters or rules. If you plan to work for two hours each evening after dinner, then get the family to buy into that. Explain the reasons this time is important to you…and to them. See if you can’t get a voluntary agreement, rather than just laying down an authoritarian rule that has to be followed! Flexibility is a key here. But beware, flexibility can quickly become an excuse for not doing the important work of building your business dream online. First set the standard, be strict with yourself an family or you will never get this idea of your special time to sink in. Once the family understands how serious you are about respecting your hours in your home office, then you can allow yourself to be flexible in taking part in a spur of the moment family events.
Dreams need to be big, but goals are the opposite. They need to be small manageable steps you can accomplish within a comfortable time frame that move you closer to that big dream. The rule of thumb is never to focus on more than three goals each day. If you have limited time you might focus on accomplishing one step in an overall larger plan. However, you set goals for yourself, be sure to write them down. Writing down a goal is the first basic step in accomplishing it. Click here to see a great article
Working from home an be a dream come true. Using the strategies I’ve outlined above will definitely help you make the transition from working outside the home to working productively in your home office. However, the unexpected will happen no matter how prepared you are. Be willing to bend in the face of some unexpected circumstance. Adhering to a schedule when things have gotten out of hand isn’t good from your sanity. Sometimes it’s been to just go with the flow than try to resist. You’ll know when these events happened. Always be wary that you are not using events as excuses. But flexibility is a marketing skill that will serve you well over the long run.
Successful people understand that it takes work, effort, and investment of time and money to get a good return on that investment.
Make sure that any program you want to join or promote has a good product behind it.
Building a business online takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight. But for people who haven’t invested, they don’t have much in the game. Therefore, when things get a little tough they walk away in disgust and say it doesn’t work.
If you are going to be successful online you need to have an email newsletter list. It is that simple.
This seems like a very simple idea. All the previous steps are about taking action.
By posting good content on your blog you will get 77% more traffic and 97% more links than those businesses that do not.
Statistics suggest that most people spend, on average, two hours a day on Facebook. With over a billion users this makes this platform a great place to find prospects and to engage with them.
Ninety-five percent of all purchases begin with someone searching for it on google. However, if you properly Optimise your site by adding relevant keywords, you will be found more often by Google. This creates more sales and sign-ups. This will also increase your ranking and prove your trustworthiness and drive more organic traffic to your site.
Social media ads turn viewers into paying customers. “Paid Social Ads ” promotes your content to your target audience. With Facebook ads, for instance, you can target by country, age, and interests. This makes Facebook, and other media platforms, a powerful way to reach your ideal or target customer.
This definition of a lead magnet is from Digital Marketer: 
Like most things in life, if we want something you need to ask.
