Simple Productivity Tips: Magnificent Mornings

Imagine a morning without a frantic search for your keys or the dreaded feeling that comes with realizing you left your laptop at home.

With a few simple tips and some minor changes to your surroundings, you can feel reassured that you will never leave the house without everything you need for your workday.

End of the day daze

The clock strikes five, and the workday ends.

Thoughts of the day slip away and our minds fall into a trance. This trance leads us to our car, onto the highway, into our driveway and through the door.

By the time we emerge from this condition we are eating dinner, getting out of the shower or sitting in front of a television.

In the meantime, you unconsciously misplace your keys, bag, and wallet.

Adapting your environment

People use convention to organize and centralize their stuff. Keys hang by the front door because that is what conventional wisdom says they should go.

Yet, convention does not work for everyone. If a person has to train him or herself to place their keys in a certain spot, then it will only be a temporary solution. Without motivation, concentration and awareness a person will fall back to ingrained habits and the key hook at the front becomes as innocuous as the wallpaper.

Organization requires two key ingredients, a defined space for similar items and the location needs to make sense to you.

The official end of your workday usually means unloading the contents of your pockets somewhere in your home. Instead, of different places for different items you should pick a place to both end and start a workday.

Example:

You come home and immediately take a shower.

Then place a set of hooks outside the bathroom door or next to the mirror. There is a good chance, clothes will go into the hamper and the keys end up on the hook.

The trigger for your mind to put the keys away will be the location, action and the visual cue of the hook.

Creating a central hub

A central hub of hooks eliminates the need to keep important items at different places around the house.

Setup a series of hooks of different sizes on the wall or on a pole in one area. You can then use larger hooks for larger items like a laptop or lunch bag. Then smaller items like loose change, jewellery and a wallet in canvas pouches that will hang from the hooks.

Another benefit of creating a personalized organization system is that people always know where to return your items after borrowing them.

Make sure you never leave important documents or your laptop behind

Mornings are naturally busy and it is easy to forget important office paperwork on a dining room table or a laptop in the den. Moreover, you usually do not realize you are missing something until you park your car at the office. The trance works both ways.

If you centralize your items, when you grab your keys, you will also grab your workbag. Nevertheless, you will need a sign to remind you something is missing.

Examples:

• Place a posted note on the outside of the bag.
• Keep a brightly colored bookmark in your bag that you can prop up when you take something out.
• Simply leave the bag or flap open
• If you do not plug in the laptop, leave the power cord hanging outside the bag.

With a few small changes to your environment, you can create a morning routine that allows you to get to work fully equipped and ready to take on the day.