The myth of morning routines
I often get asked about morning routines.
You read a lot of stuff about the morning routines of top business owners and celebrities, but the reality is they are not successful because of those routines – they just happen to be their routines. They are successful for a multitude of other reasons, but the lazy folk of social media want a quick fix they can copy!
What is much more important is how you structure your time and what activities fit into that time.
One of my favourite parts of the week is sitting down on a Sunday night and finalising the planning for my week ahead.
I switch around any calls in my diary to make the timings more convenient. I finalise my ‘to-do’ lists. I clear out any old emails.
I feel very productive and satisfied by the time I have finished
Adapting to change
But over the last few months, I have changed how I plan my weeks now.
If you follow my content you will know that I have been making a lot of changes to my businesses lately. Consolidating companies. Removing underperforming staff. Recruiting new personnel. Reassessing my goals.
This all ultimately has an effect on what I want to do, how I spend my time and the activities I am prepared to get involved with.
I love my work as everyone knows and I will be doing it to the day I die.
But I have a simple metric for success, and that is happiness. And I haven’t been as happy as I could be lately, and that is primarily down to my work and the activities I am doing.
So some changes were needed to cut out the shit and concentrate on the things that really matter.
My time should be spent doing only 2 things:
- The highest leverage activities
- Things that make me happy
Nothing else! And that is the same for every business owner.
What moves the dial for me?
If someone else can do something quicker and cheaper than you, then they should be doing it.
Your time should be saved only for things that seriously move the dial.
For me, that is things like:
- Raising finance
- Building relationships
- Networking
- Marketing
To be clear, I am absolutely not saying that I ONLY want to do things that I like. That would be very naive. The highest leverage activities and things that move the dial the most are just that – the things that move the dial the most. That doesn’t mean I enjoy them all.
Sitting through hours of interviews for potential Group Financial Controllers is mind-numbing! Telling someone about our businesses AGAIN and then listening to their background and stories. I hate it. But filling a role like that is utterly crucial to get right and there is no one that it could be solely delegated to.
The same can be said for writing an investor presentation. Not fun to do, but serious upside in getting it right.
When it comes to things that make me happy, exercise is pretty high on that list.
I love my fitness. Exercise is a massive part of my life both because I enjoy it and because it improves every other area of my life.
I do it every day, and I prefer to do it in the morning. Morning suits me, firstly because it makes me feel great and sets me up for the day, and secondly because it ensures it gets done. If I had it as an afternoon or evening activity then work problems may take over and I will have to miss out.
So it’s non-negotiable in my diary. 8am until around 10am or 10.30am are blocked out every morning for my exercise. I don’t do it earlier because I don’t want to wake up at 6. I go to bed late and I work late so it doesn’t suit me to get up super early.
I have no issue being honest about this, letting people know that whilst they may be in the office I am in the gym or still sleeping. I work well into the evenings. I work Saturdays and Sundays. So if I want to use the first part of the morning to go to the gym or have an extra hour’s sleep, then I will do just that.
Dismissing the early bird myth
It’s all very alpha and popular on social media to talk about how early you should get up and how much work you should have done before the rest of the world wakes up. It may make for great content but it’s total bollocks. All that matters is what your output is. Are you getting your workload done? Are you performing better than others? Are you winning?
If you are, then start at whatever time suits you!
I put a lot of things in my diary as both a reminder to myself and also to block the space out so that my Calendly app doesn’t get confused and double-book me.
Calendly is a great tool that saves countless hours by removing the back-and-forth emails that are often used to confirm meeting times with people. I can give someone a simple link, which is set up with my preference parameters, and it will allow them to book a meeting at a mutually convenient time by showing them the availability I have in my diary.
I have calls on a Monday with my key business partners and C-suite staff. This is a guaranteed time we get to talk where they can update me on key issues, and get my input in anything that is needed.
These used to be booked in as 1 hour calls. They are now booked for 30 minutes. There is always the odd exception but in the main, 30 minutes is enough time to blast through an organised meeting with no unnecessary small talk in it.
Pointless meetings, and the attendance at meetings by individuals who aren’t really needed, are one of the biggest costs to business. Just do the maths on a 90 minute / 2 hour meeting that has 8, 9, 10, 12 people in it.
These meetings are costing hundreds of pounds just for people to attend, never mind the lost productivity from what they could be working on instead!
Jeff Bezos is famous for his 2 pizza rule at Amazon. No meeting should be so large that the participants can’t all be fed with just 2 pizzas.
My Sunday Routine
On a Sunday, as well as the planning for my week ahead, I have 2 hours carved out for content writing (what you are reading here) and 2 hours for networking and outreach.
I firmly believe that every business owner should be writing the vast majority of their brand content, or at least having a large hand in it as the business grows. Outsourcing to copywriters who pump out generic, vanilla BS will never help you build a brand. No one knows your business like you do. You may not be a great writer but you will certainly improve over time with practice.
It could be blog writing, or creating tweets. Writing bullet points for potential scripts on videos I want to record. Jotting down thoughts for my newsletter, questions for an upcoming podcast. It’s my time to get creative.
My 2 hours of networking is typically LinkedIn outreach. I select target groups of people (this week for example it was people working in financial services and based in Dubai) and I use LinkedIn to find as many as I can.
I check their profiles for relevance, send them a connection request with a personalised message, and I build up my online network.
Sure, there will undoubtedly be times throughout the week I can do bits of this, but marking out the Sunday time GUARANTEES it gets done, and 2 hours helps me achieve some meaningful scale.
I like to use my rule of 100. So that’s aiming to make 100 contacts, which is more than achievable in 2 hours.
It’s not just routine: find your rhythm
Obviously, I have many other individual items that build into my diary each week. Meetings, lunches, phone calls, site visits, dinners. But the things I have talked about above are set things that have become routine and systematised for me.
You need to find what works best for how to plan your time and what are your most high leverage activities.
I used to love a diary of white space – feeling I could fit into it whatever I wanted whenever I wanted.
But it was ultimately inefficient. So now I like a mix of the 2. White space to allow flexibility and ad hoc requests, but also certain fixed, non-negotiables that are important to me and I can build my weeks and life around.
Before you start laying out your diary, first work out the activities that are most important to you. Build from there, and don’t let anybody interfere with what works for you!
