Work Unravelled

Boosting Productivity with an Effective Morning Routine

Scott Fulton and Andrew Lloyd Gordon Season 1 Episode 12

In this episode of the Work Unravelled podcast, we explore the importance of establishing an effective morning routine to enhance work-life balance and productivity. 

We discuss:

✔️ Dismantling the myth of the '5:00 AM club' and advocating for personalised routines that suit individual needs. 

✔️ The significance of taking time at the start of the day for reflection and planning

✔️ The idea of conducting high-energy tasks like 'eating the frog' early in the morning

✔️ The benefits of time boxing and walking meetings. 

✔️ Actionable tips for setting a positive tone and managing your time effectively to enhance productivity and team dynamics.

✔️ and more... 

📍Timestamps

  • 00:00 Introduction to Work Unravelled Podcast
  • 00:32 The Importance of a Morning Routine
  • 01:00 Creating a Personalised Morning Routine
  • 01:31 Prioritisation and Planning Your Day
  • 04:58 Avoiding Common Pitfalls
  • 09:29 Deep Work and Time Management
  • 11:13 Communicating and Leading Effectively
  • 19:32 Time Boxing and Productivity Tips
  • 23:54 Final Thoughts and Tips
  • 26:19 Conclusion and Next Steps

Send us a text

Support the show

👉Find Andrew online at: https://www.andrewlloydgordon.co.uk/
👉Find Scott online at: https://linktr.ee/scottfulton

[00:00:00] **Andrew:** Hi, I am Andrew. Welcome to the Work Unravelled podcast. In each episode, we break down a piece of the workplace puzzle, providing practical insights, fresh perspectives, and actionable solutions to help you navigate the ever-changing world of work. 

[00:00:15] **Scott:** And I'm Scott, whether you are a leader, a professional, or simply curious about what makes organizations tick, this show offers strategies to think smarter, work better, and lead boldly join us as we turn workplace complexity into clarity.

One episode at a time.

[00:00:32] **Andrew:** We're gonna be talking about in this episode how to have an effective morning and why having a, a good morning routine is really important for. Your work life. And I would say to you, you don't need to be in that 5:00 AM club. Um, you know, there's this whole thing online about getting up at 5:00 AM and being super productive if you get up so early.

And if you are getting up at 5:00 AM um, and you know, you can get all that sort of stuff in before most people start work, then good luck to you. But really what we're gonna talk about in this episode are some ideas to help you create a routine that works for you. not about sort of beating yourself up and doing stupidly difficult things, you know, before you start work.

It's about having a routine that works. Works for work.

[00:01:17] **Scott:** You see these clickbait headlines, the morning routine of these CEOs and super successful celebrities. And

[00:01:24] **Andrew:** Yeah. I.

[00:01:24] **Scott:** uh, yeah, as you said, it has to be what works for people and people have different needs and different situations. So we're gonna be sharing tips and ideas for how to. Think better 'cause that's really important.

And also in hand that should come with less stress in the workplace. And working from home, we're gonna talk about prioritization, tools, techniques, communication tactics, some mindset resets, and some scheduling tips today. So let's get into it.

[00:01:52] **Andrew:** Yeah, and I, I wanna say before we actually dive in is clearly somebody will be listening to this and thinking, well, I start work in the afternoon. So there are people with different shift patterns and you know, people work part-time. So whatever. When we say the morning, we, we probably should clarify the start of your working day. And this is obviously designed for people who work in offices. You know, as it were, professional managerial jobs, but we're talking about the beginning of your day. Whenever that starts is being the most crucial time. And if you can get it right, it will improve your productivity and efficiency throughout the whole day. If you get it wrong or you've, you've got a, a routine that doesn't really work for you, it can affect everything for the rest of the day. We're gonna talk about this in a, in another episode, but your day starts the day before, so your morning, whenever that is, actually starts the night before. So you're gonna think about your. Day, the evening before. And if you can, you want to, you know, prepare stuff.

So if you've got client meetings in the morning, make sure you've got all the, the notes ready. If you're going to have a team meeting, you know what you're gonna talk about. So the, the day starts with preparation from the evening before. as I say, we'll come back to that in another episode. But I think the most important thing you should do. In a morning, and this is something I fell into the trap of if I wasn't careful, giving yourself some time when you start your day to reflect you really wanna see the day and look across the day at the start and see what's coming up. Look at your calendar and plan the day. And if you, you can only find five minutes. The first five, 10 minutes of your day is where you should stop and reflect and say, what do I wanna try and do with this day? What are the things I need to get done? Who do I need to speak to? What do I want to achieve? And I wouldn't put, and I think you'll talk about this as well, I wouldn't put any meetings in for maybe the first couple of hours if you can. But the one meeting you should have is with yourself and put in your diary, put it in your calendar. And block this out, a meeting with yourself, which sounds a bit bizarre, but what I mean by that is that you spend that five, 10 minutes looking at your to-do list, looking at your projects and, and prioritizing, are the maybe three things I really need to do today to move a project forward or to get things going in a certain area, or, or who do I need to talk to today?

And picking just maybe three things that you want to try and achieve in that day, and ideally in that five minutes, that first five minutes, you choose the one priority for the day. If everything else goes south today, if, if I achieve nothing else today, what is the one thing that I should on today? So I say, I think that's for me is the most important part of the day, is that first few minutes where you scan ahead. You reflect, you pause, you set the intention and you choose your top priorities.

[00:04:58] **Scott:** Yeah, the mistake many people make is, and I used to do this myself, is rather than taking that time out, the first thing they do is switch on the computer and go straight, straight into the inbox. And then you're lost. You're lost the rest of the day because you've then got the. Hundreds of emails that you're dealing with, depending on the nature of your work, of course.

But for many office workers, email is a major problem and we'll probably talk about that in another episode as well get into more detail on that. But it's actually, as you said, what's the the top priority for that day? And there's a book called Eat That Frog, which we'll make sure we put a link to in the show notes.

And the concept is basically do the hardest task first. So eating the frog is quite unpleasant. I'm vegetarian so I wouldn't do that anyway, but, but fundamentally we put, we tend to put off those hard tasks. And actually, if you do that hard thing first, first thing in the morning when your energy levels are the highest, when you're feeling most refreshed, when you've not got sucked into another pointless meeting or your inbox achieving that one thing can set you off so well for the rest of the day.

As you've said, even if you do nothing else. When the day is complete and you do spend the rest of your time in these pointless meetings, um, you've done something and that gives you that dopamine hit. It gives you that, that, Hey, I did summit today. That was really a value because if what tends to happen is, you know, you've gotta do that thing, you'll put it off, you'll distract yourself with busyness, emails, meetings, other things, water cooler conversations, all the other things that we've talked about in other episodes, and then the end of day comes, you've got no energy left 'cause it's been s sapped.

By all those other low level tasks and that hard thing, oh, I'll do that tomorrow. I just don't got the energy. And then you go through the same cycle the next day and the hard thing doesn't get done.

[00:06:41] **Andrew:** Yeah, indeed. I, I, I think there's a, there's a great, uh, quote about, um, procrastination. That procrastination isn't a time management issue. It's an emotional management issue, and often, almost always, why you are avoiding something is not because you don't know cognitively. Rationally that it's the thing you should do. It's just you are you, you don't like the feeling that you get when you think about that. Whatever it is, you know, the project, talking to that person, having that meeting, maybe it's a difficult conversation and we've covered difficult conversations in, in previous episodes. So really when you are looking at procrastination, people avoid stuff that makes them f they, they don't that feeling.

[00:07:22] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:07:22] **Andrew:** And I

[00:07:22] **Scott:** It's a fear, isn't it? Sometimes as well. Fear of being judged or fear of failing. It's other, those, those reasons you put these things off.

[00:07:29] **Andrew:** That's right. You, you are uncomfortable when you think about that project. You think about that meeting, you feel uncomfortable, and rather than addressing it, we all do this. We'll switch to something that feels less scary. feels more comfortable. We'll dive into the inbox.

We'll, you know, I'll just go and talk to so and so down the corridor, or I'll just see if somebody's available for a quick chat. We are avoiding the emotional upset rather than the sort of project, you know, that sort of time management thing. So I think you're right. I think. we should get is that discipline, as I mentioned, of saying what, what's the most important thing, we've talked about again in other episodes, emotional awareness is when you think about that priority task, what's the feeling have?

And, and if you're avoiding it, it's because it feels uncomfortable. But yeah, you want to, you wanna do that prioritization really quickly. And it's interesting you were saying that about diving into things. When I had a team that I managed in a, in a large open plan office. I might plan, you know, to come in and sit for five minutes on my own, but my team would see me immediately and come across, I remember people coming across the room and say, oh, hi Andrew.

Morning. How are you? Although I, I tended to try and get in early before most people, but people in, you know, maybe when I was arriving and the conversation would start and then I get dragged over to somebody's desk and say, could you have a check this for me? Would you read this for me? So I think it's about managing your own time. But also having that discipline and assertiveness to, you know, be clear to other people. You, you are gonna need five, 10 minutes at the beginning of the day before you, you get dragged into things. Did you have that

[00:09:02] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:09:02] **Andrew:** when you managed teams?

[00:09:04] **Scott:** Similar. Yeah. And, um, it's, that balance isn't between being there for them, but also having the headspace yourself to, um, to support them. So

[00:09:14] **Andrew:** Yes.

[00:09:14] **Scott:** we're saying people that's, say for arguments sake, you start work at nine. Uh, I appreciate not everyone's the same. Block out that time in your calendar as a recurring slot for that five, 10 minute time just to talk to yourself and to plan out the day.

Think about what you're doing and actually, if you wanna extend that further, try something called a focus sprint where I say, actually for the first 25 minutes of work, I'm not going to go into my inbox. I'm going to block that time out and, and I'm gonna tackle that hard task. Even if you don't complete it, you start to make progress on it.

So it's about protecting your head space. As we said, when your energy levels at the highest, that's your optimum time. And there's patterns throughout the day when you'll start to have a crash mid-morning and then in the afternoon after you've had your lunch. But for most people, not everybody, but for most people that morning.

Is your prime time to do the hard task, to do what we call deep work where you have to think about complex things, be focused, and avoid those distractions. So definitely try and protect that time and you'll be amazed. Just try it tomorrow. Be amazed what you can do, what you can achieve in that 25 minutes, the first thing in the morning.

[00:10:23] **Andrew:** Yeah. And, and I'd say that one thing about deep work, people might know the term. I often find people dunno what is their deep work. They don't understand possibly what they should be doing in deep work. So it, this also comes back to knowing what makes the greatest impact your job. Now, a leader manager, maybe you, you are conscious of that you might need to help your team with this.

You know, you need to help them prioritize what is the stuff that makes the biggest difference. So yeah, the deep work is really important to get done quickly. And as you've said, I think if you, you spend that 25 minutes on that d work, you'll probably make more progress in those 25 minutes than the previous month. If you allocate that time just to say, I'm just gonna work on this, I'm gonna turn the notifications off. I'm not gonna look at my inbox. I'm not gonna have people come and chat to me. I'm gonna focus on this for the next 25 minutes,

I think something else is really good to do at the start of a day, and I wish I'd done this more when I had teams that I managed is communicate early and often. Although we, we communicate often throughout the day. What I mean is I think that you can set the tone as a leader, as a manager with those very first, very few. and I think what is a really good idea is getting something out to the team. it doesn't have to be every single morning, although it could be, it could be every morning where you send out that vibe. Now, if you've got a team that's around you in the office, like in, as I say, I, I used to work in a, a large open plan office, then fine, you can walk around and say hi to people.

But what, once you've done that, maybe 25 minutes of work, that deep work. Even you can do this with scheduled emails is send out, uh, I dunno, a positive message or two to teams and to colleagues just to check in with them what you can do. As I say, using scheduled emails, you could even write them the day before, is just say something. You know, uplifting something positive. Check in with people. Remind them of, you know, you are available to help them. Remind them that you are there to support them if, if you need to. It doesn't wanna come across as an email that is sort of like, tell me what you're doing. It's just to say hi. It's just a friendly hello and sets the vibe. . Does that sort of make sense? Is that something that, again, I wish I'd done more of that myself. 

[00:12:39] **Scott:** Yeah, so we talked about in the agility episode, uh, standup meetings. So whilst I wouldn't send out an email because my team was quite small and we were all in the same room, we found that those meetings were really, really helpful to share what we're working on, what we're gonna be tackling that day. And actually, I like that idea of what you're suggesting there around the positive message that could be weaved into that meeting as well to say, you know, we've got really good objective coming up today, or Here's a.

Funny story I heard last night, or just anything to, as you said, lift the mood and start the day off on the right foot for the team.

[00:13:12] **Andrew:** Yeah, you as a manager, as a leader, your emotional health, you have to be good at managing that emotional stuff inside you because you are sending a message to your team about how you feel, and they will pick that up. And if you are in a, and, and, and clearly, and, and you've, you've talked about this in the past as well, you know, we talk about vulnerability, we talk about being authentic If you're going through challenges as a manager, yes, sure you wanna share some of that, but really as a manager, as a leader, you set an example in so many ways, you know, and, and you set an example that you, you are able to move projects forward.

You know, if you, you can't complain to your teams that they are not getting their work done. If you never get round to finishing things. You know, that deep work that we talked about that you should try and start with. If you don't move the dial on projects, if you don't make your contribution, then why should they? So you are setting an example. So yeah, that positive energy that you can bring to a team can transform how they feel, you know? Well, the bosses in a good mood

[00:14:15] **Scott:** Mm-hmm.

[00:14:15] **Andrew:** you know, we've all had bosses that were not in a good mood and everybody's energy just goes down, you know, they just keep their heads down, literally keep their heads down.

[00:14:24] **Scott:** Mm. There's a cloud over the team then.

[00:14:26] **Andrew:** gosh. Yeah. And again, I keep using my own experience here, but you know, this is, this is something I can remember. I, I used to work in a quite a large organization and we were part of a group and I'd get dragged into my managers, my, my bosses, you know, I was the boss of a team, but then I had a boss myself, he was just, he was just, how can I put it? He was difficult. He's probably the, the politest thing that I can say, but he had mood swings. had absolute mood swings. And I would go to a meeting and we used to have a meeting like once a week with him as a group. And I'd go into that meeting with him and sometimes he was just, he was just angry and he was upset 'cause he had a boss, you know?

It was like every

[00:15:08] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:15:09] **Andrew:** rolls downhill, you might know the expression. Something rolls downhill.

[00:15:11] **Scott:** Poop.

[00:15:12] **Andrew:** well poop wells downhill. So he was really upset, he was really stressed and I wasn't so aware of it then. So I would actually get stressed and annoyed and frustrated 'cause I felt, you know, put upon, would go back with that energy, that negative energy sometimes. Now, if I caught myself, I, I'd almost like, before I went into our office, I'd also, you know, take a breath at the door and, and go in with a bit of a smile. But if I wasn't aware, I'd go in with a cloud over me. And what I realized once I'd done this a few times was my, my team members were watching me, you know, either literally or sort of through the side of their eyes as they were, what's up with Andrew?

What, what's wrong? And if I was in a bad place, it would actually affect them. So, yeah,

[00:15:54] **Scott:** Yeah, because they'll be thinking, have they done something wrong?

[00:15:56] **Andrew:** well,

[00:15:57] **Scott:** Oh, what? You know?

[00:15:58] **Andrew:** on

[00:15:59] **Scott:** No.

[00:15:59] **Andrew:** they, they, they are worried and they're anxious if you are worried and anxious. So I say, I think certainly at the start of the day. At the beginning of the day, which is what we're talking about on this episode, is try and set a positive tone.

[00:16:11] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:16:11] **Andrew:** things go wrong in, in organizations, problems come up, but you need to give that team that sense of, I've got this, you know, I'm the manager, I'm the leader. I've,

[00:16:21] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:16:21] **Andrew:** charge of myself. You know, I'm managing my o own emotions and I'm here to support and uplift you, it's a really

[00:16:28] **Scott:** Yeah. And it's reassuring them that you are there for them as well. Um, you've probably heard of the servant leader model.

[00:16:35] **Andrew:** Yes,

[00:16:36] **Scott:** Uh, whenever I had drew an org chart, I put myself at the bottom to say, well, actually my job is to support the team. You know, give them that direction, but I don't necessarily call the shots because they're the people I've employed to make those smart decisions.

[00:16:50] **Andrew:** yes,

[00:16:50] **Scott:** So, kind of think of it in a different way to the normal traditional hierarchy. Obviously I was their line manager, which then leads me to. Supporting them and back to that morning routine. Actually, if somebody says, can they have a quick word? Why not suggest, yeah, let's go for a quick walk round the office or outside.

Ideally not round the office, but around the outside of the office. You know, get some fresh air, get some exercise, get some sunlight in the morning, which is obviously good for you in terms of energy levels and sleep in the evening and all that good stuff as well. So try and combine. Meeting with a walk and talk and I would do that quite often.

My one-to-ones with my team would not be sat facing each other opposite a desk with a notepad. It would be, let's go for a walk. I was very lucky. I worked at a place that had a lot of nice grounds, so let's go for a walk around the grounds, um, see some wildlife and talk about how it's going. And actually I would find people would open up a bit more then as well because they're not in that office environment.

[00:17:47] **Andrew:** The, the, there definitely is research that, you know, moving and, and talking and thinking come more together so we can walk and talk and think. And there's a different type of thinking that happens when you are moving. human beings are meant to move, but we sit at eight hours on our, our bottoms in, in chairs that are not really very comfortable. So, yeah. One thing I used to do with my team was I would go and get a coffee and I would often take different, I would pay. just clarify. I, I would pay, but I would take different team members and go for a coffee with them

[00:18:17] **Scott:** Hm.

[00:18:17] **Andrew:** would chat on the way to get the coffee and then we'd chat on the way back often found that I had more productive as it were with that person in the sort of 10, it was about 10 minutes out and 10 minutes back, uh, than I would do at any other time.

And you, you build that relationship. So I think walking and talking meetings are a really good idea. And doing them early in the day again sets that energy. Energy level, doesn't it?

[00:18:43] **Scott:** Yeah. Presumably those coffee meetings weren't back to back, or you'd have had about 10 cups of coffee in a row, 

[00:18:47] **Andrew:** No, I, I don't need do one once or twice a day. But it was, it was really good to, I just, I did have the habit of saying, come on, Maddy, or whoever it was, do you want to come out for a coffee? and I, if they were busy, I wouldn't enforce them to.

[00:19:01] **Scott:** yeah.

[00:19:01] **Andrew:** people jumped to the chance, of course.

See people work from home. I remember in COVI, people having meetings walking around. I remember one person near where I live, she was clearly having, she was in a meeting but walking and talking in, in a meeting. Um, I don't see that so much now, yeah, we maybe, 'cause we were all stuck on the screens and in teams meetings, but walking and talking meetings certainly you can do them at any time of the day. But, you know, getting that energy level up at the start is, is also a really good, a really good, uh, tip. I think.

[00:19:32] **Scott:** So another thing people can do is time box their day. So actually block out in the calendar certain things for certain times of the day. So as we said, the initial part of the day should ideally be that deep work. So the hardest thing, so that could be either writing a business case or solving a particular problem.

And then maybe just before lunch, you then maybe think about looking at your email. So block out some time for that. Then after lunch when you're a bit more energized or there's a, some people crash a bit after lunch, depending if you have a healthy lunch or not. That might be another chunk of, of deeper work or not quite as deep work that you wanna focus on something else different.

So for in sales it could be making outreach calls to potential customers. So actually time boxing blocks of your. And some people don't even bother with the to-do list. Their calendar is their to-do list, so you can literally know exactly what you're doing. Now, I've tried this myself and sometimes slipped out and not stuck to what I was meant to in that schedule.

So it only really works if you stick to it. And of course, things change. Things come out the woodwork, or there's some surprises you might have to change course. But in principle, try and set this routine throughout your day and then you can map that across a week. So Monday is a particular theme. Tuesday might be a different theme.

So, yeah, time boxing can be helpful as well.

[00:20:46] **Andrew:** I, I really love time boxing. I wish I'd used it earlier in, in my career because I tend to come in, and this is again about the whole routine is, is what am I gonna do today? And then what am, when am I gonna do those things? So this is. The first part of the day is what we're talking about is you planning what you want to achieve. Time boxing is, when am I going to do it? you, you, you talked about that maybe first 90 minutes of deep work, you're just gonna focus on that. And then the second block of my time is when I'm gonna have those meetings I only have meetings from 11 till. Two or something. Okay. And then from two till three, I then do my email. The danger is you jump around from inbox to meeting, to deep work, to inbox to meetings to, and you've talked many times about tasks switching. So there's

[00:21:37] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:21:37] **Andrew:** of energy, a loss of focus, a lot of a loss of productivity if you keep jumping around different types of tasks.

[00:21:43] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:21:43] **Andrew:** So, so I find. I find it so useful to say right from 11 till whenever, 12 is when I'm going to do, I dunno, my, my, um, my admin or something and I get so much done. Whereas if I don't, like you mentioned, if I don't do that, I'll start at 11, I'll do five, 10 minutes of email and then, or I must do the admin thing and I'll jump into the admin and do five, 10 minutes of that and then I'm back into email. So yeah, time boxing is really powerful. but I put it in my calendar now.

I literally

[00:22:12] **Scott:** Hmm.

[00:22:13] **Andrew:** different color. It gets a bit anal Willie, but I have different color coding for different blocks of time throughout the day. And as you mentioned, you can have Tuesdays for this type of work, Wednesdays for that type of work. It's, it's, it's really effective, but it has to be a habit.

It's not something you can

[00:22:28] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:22:29] **Andrew:** you know, instantly. And I think the other thing, again, from a the morning routine is some of your colleagues, some of your team members are very good at doing this. they're naturally organized. Some of them won't be. I think again, as a manager, you are trying to manage your own time and, and, you know, set some, um, set some schedules up. Maybe you need to support some of your colleagues. Maybe you need to support some of your team members who aren't necessarily that great at some of these things as well. And you can check in with them again at the start of the day to see, you know, what are they planning, how are they gonna plan it, but when are they gonna do it?

[00:23:02] **Scott:** Yeah. And that that time boxing, by putting it in your calendar, sets that example as well. So. Again, people can then see your calendar, can look at your calendar and see, oh, this is what Andrew's doing on this time at this day, and maybe I'll try that. And it's also setting that example, but also being transparent that people then know

[00:23:19] **Andrew:** Yeah.

[00:23:20] **Scott:** Monday mornings at 10:00 AM That's what Andrew's working on, so I'm not gonna bother him then 'cause I know he's doing that really important task in that period of time.

[00:23:27] **Andrew:** Yeah. If

[00:23:27] **Scott:** So the manager can lead by example and share that as well. Being transparent.

[00:23:31] **Andrew:** absolutely. You can lead by example in the way that you, you, you, you sort of conduct yourself, your emotions, but you can also lead by example, the way you set your calendar up. Not all organizations share calendars, not everybody shares that, but you can demonstrate how to be productive by your calendar sharing, how you use email, how you slack messages you demonstrate, you lead by example. That's what we're talking about.

[00:23:54] **Scott:** Yeah.

[00:23:54] **Andrew:** should we try and wrap this up then, Scott, in terms of. Some final tips and thoughts on having a productive start to your day.

[00:24:01] **Scott:** Mm-hmm.

[00:24:01] **Andrew:** I've got sort of three things really I wanted to sort of get across, I suppose, and I think the first thing for me, as we mentioned at the start of this, is starting with clarity, is put into your diary, as you mentioned, try and avoid dragged into things the moment you get in the office. Put into the, your diary five, 10 minutes where you have a meeting with yourself. It's transformative. You know, what's the intention? What's the mindset you want to want to adopt? How are you feeling? What are your priorities? You know, what are the top three, but what's the number one? Set that intention at the start of the day. out time to do that deep work. need to set the example that we are productive in this place. We don't just flit about doing different things. I get on with things and I'm focused and have that deep work. And the other thing that I, I've sort of talked about a bit is send out or, and you talked about the daily standup, where you go around and have a daily standup with teams.

But if you don't have a team that's with you in the office, if it's a distributed team, use email or Slack or whatever messaging tool you use to say hi to everybody. Check in with everybody, you know, set, set that tone and be positive. Reward people, acknowledge people and and encourage them to have a good start to their day.

[00:25:13] **Scott:** From my perspective, we talked about, uh, eat that frog. So do the hardest task first. Use your energy when it's at its peak. So do the hard thing when you've got the highest energy levels.

Protect your time from meetings. Time, box your time. So say actually this period of time and. Time of the day, I'm gonna do this activity, then I'm gonna do my emails at this time. Then can do something else after lunch at these times. So time box that up. Have walking meetings whenever you can. So walk and talk with your team, with colleagues, with people that you need to speak to rather than just doing it on the video call or.

Face-to-face if you can. And yeah, I've, I always say, protect your time. 'cause otherwise people are gonna take it from you. So that morning is a crucial time for you to be highly productive. And if you can do something in that first hour, and even if the rest of the day goes south, you've done something valuable that morning.

So, yeah, let's make best use of those mornings.

[00:26:07] **Andrew:** I think so. I think if you structure your morning routine better than perhaps you're doing at the moment, it will transform your productivity. You'll feel so much better about yourself. You'll feel so much better about your work, and you'll get far more done.

Thank you for listening to the Work Unraveled podcast. We hope you enjoyed this episode. Be sure to subscribe to the show so you don't miss the next one. If you'd like Andrew or me to help 

[00:26:30] **Scott:** you or your 

[00:26:31] **Andrew:** business, 

[00:26:31] **Scott:** whether it is for team productivity, leadership, coaching, or communication skills, our website addresses are in the show notes.

Thanks, and until the next time.

[00:26:50] **Andrew:** Hi, I am Andrew. Welcome to the Work Unravelled podcast. In each episode, we break down a piece of the workplace puzzle, providing practical insights, fresh perspectives, and actionable solutions to help you navigate the ever-changing world of work. 

[00:27:06] **Scott:** And I'm Scott, whether you are a leader, a professional, or simply curious about what makes organizations tick, this show offers strategies to think smarter, work better, and lead boldly join us as we turn workplace complexity into clarity.

One episode at a time.


People on this episode