Your alarm clock chimes and you dash out of bed to start the day. Get ready, pour yourself some coffee and drive – or if you’re like me and work from home…walk – to work.  Without a workday startup ritual, you check emails and dive into your day. And most days, the day disappears in a blur. 

“Where did the day go?” you wonder. “I wanted to work on the big goal of mine, but I was inundated with other pressing matters.”

Well, friend, I’d like to suggest a Workday Startup Ritual. What’s a Workday Startup ritual, you ask? Read on…

Here’s how it works.

The workday startup ritual is a piece of sanity-saving heaven that helps you start your day in a more organized way. 

I first learned about it from Amy Porterfield, but is also in Michael Hyatt’s Full Focus Planner which you can read more about here).

In your workday startup ritual, you decide what tasks are the best kickstarters for your day that help you feel grounded, organized, and able to strategically move through your day,, so that you’re not just busy, you’re effective.

Then, you calendar allotted time every single day to execute the startup ritual before moving on to the rest of your day.

Limit distractions and focus on priorities.

Try this, dear reader: Write a list of your main priorities and goals. Then, look at what you accomplish every day. Are you accomplishments aligned with your priorities? If not, something’s off. The workday startup ritual can help you get your actions into alignment with your priorities.

Think proactive versus reactive. The Workday Startup Ritual is a great way to harness some of the many interruptions that can take you off task during your day.

For example, email and other social media and team notifications were my nemeses. I used to allow them to interrupt me all day, which was, in essence, making them the priority of my day. Not only did this interrupt critical focus and brain flow, but it kept my true priorities from getting done.

When I reconnected to my priorities and moved checking emails, my team project management needs, and other social notifications to my workday startup, I created a system where I now am much more responsive to everybody. Especially my own vision.

But perhaps more importantly, I’m able to schedule my best focus time on achieving the big picture priorities I identified in my Big 3 by allotting those response times to specific times of the day.

4 Steps to Create Your Workday Startup Ritual

Your Workday Startup Ritual could be 5 minutes, or it could be 90+ – the key is you get to decide what activities to do at the start of your workday, which will add intention and success to your day.

Step 1:  Check in with your priority One Thing and your Big 3 goals. Write down a few of the items that you’d really like to get done every single morning that might help you move closer to your vision or free up space in your day so that you can focus on those priorities. 

Step 2:  For a few days, track of how long each task takes. Notice any variables in your time assumptions.  You get to decide how long tasks take, but it’s good to have a starting place. Don’t just want to assign an arbitrary time slot, then let that stress you out. You’ll help clarify and improve your day if you’re realistic from the start. 

Step 3: Once you’ve allotted time for each task, what’s the total? Schedule your total time to start each day dedicated to your weekday startup tasks. 

Step 4: After practicing for a week, tweak it for next week, if needed. Take note of how it felt to accomplish certain tasks.  Are there other tasks that you’d prefer to accomplish instead? What worked well?

Sample Workday Startup Rituals

The Workday Startup Ritual has helped me by putting a time limit on some tasks that I might otherwise frolic with and take too long to complete, or worse, interrupt my focus time throughout the day to tend to them. For instance, my productivity skyrocketed after limiting my email read and response to 15 minutes max at the start of the day!

Here’s what my Workday Startup Ritual is right now:

• 2 minute to write down 3 things I’m grateful for
• 3 minute review of my One Thing, Quarterly Big 3 Goals, and Weekly Big 3 Outcomes
• 10 minutes check and clear Asana, my business project management app, and Submittable, the submissions management app I love for our Team Rainmaker’s resume project management
• 10 minutes to clear inbox
• 5 minutes to check and update schedule, based on Asana, Submittable, and email changes and confirm my Daily Big 3 Tasks

This year I feel more organized, focused and clearer than ever. I can’t get enough of my workday startup ritual. I love how calm it helps me feel.  And oh so organized! I’m even sleeping better, trusting my rituals to cover what my brain used to juggle in the wee hours of the night.

I might even try moving my inbox ritual later in the day to see if I’ll be even more focused and productive.

Your workday startup ritual doesn’t have to be as long as mine.  One of my colleague’s startup ritual is quite simple. Yet it’s the perfect start for her day as a busy working mom:

• 5 minutes of simple meditation with a timer
• 2 minutes reading this quarter’s goals
• 1-2 minutes reading a daily reminder to keep her goals simple and that slow progress is great progress

Take even just a few minutes each day to keep your workday organized, foresee any schedule issues, and pay attention to the big goals you’re working on (even if it’s just while you gulp down down another cup of coffee).

Add a Workday Startup Ritual for your career goals.

If you have a career goal this year, and I recommend you do,  you could easily implement some part of your career goal into your Workday Startup Ritual.  

About goals. I don’t recommend them so you can hustle and strive and grasp your way through the year. Never. I recommend them because goals help evolve your systems and habits and emotional maturity. 

Whether or not you achieve the goal, you and your career will be better for the effort. This is especially true if you adopt the kind of approaches like the morning startup ritual.

It can be really simple, such as ‘Every workday I will spend 3 minutes visualizing myself succeeding with my next career goal’.

Are you currently looking for your next job or career change? If so, click here to take my Job Search Optimization Quiz. I’ll tell you exactly what you should do to land your next job.