Your Morning Power Hour

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Multiplier Time-Leveraging Strategy: One morning hour (your “Power Hour”) equals two evening hours. Get up and into the office one or even two hours earlier than you have up until now. You will find you will be able to accomplish twice as much in any given early morning hour as you will in one evening hour.

Chances are you’ll be less mentally alert in the evening, especially if you have worked a full day. If your most productive hours are late at night or you’re simply not a morning person, you can use late night hours as your “power hour” time. The key is to determine what time of day your mind is most clear, focused and energized, and to dedicate that time to working on your business. In coaching, I call this “your edge.”

This strategy is why the world’s top business owners can be found in their offices hours much earlier than those less successful. To join the ranks of other outrageously successful business people, you will want to be found in your office right along with them. If you’ve picked up this book, it’s probably because you’re not part of “the pack,” or at the very least you’re tired of being there!

You will use your power hour to handle the most important aspects of your day: strategic planning, scheduling, and systems. By doing this before anyone else even begins working, you’ve gained control of the flow of the rest of your day.

If you don’t (or you haven’t), you’ll find yourself reacting to the events of the day instead of being able to respond to them. This makes you “response-able.” Your power hour is when you should be focused only on actions that take you closer to your long-range goals.

This is not the time to catch up on e-mail, handle short-term actions or work on paperwork. Those tasks are all time traps, and if you succumb to them, you’ll never gain the exponential multiplication of quality, focused time you’re after! You’ll put those into your schedule, on purpose, in a time slot where you don’t need to be on your “A” game. Delegating these simple tasks to your assistant will also multiply your efficiency and effectiveness.

Here’s a simple example: imagine a five-year-old boy with a small chunk of Kryptonite sneaking up on Superman while he sleeps. If Superman doesn’t see him coming, he’s trapped. It doesn’t matter that Superman is a superior adversary. A little boy has gained control of Superman’s time and consequently he is now in control of Superman.

It’s the same thing with your average workday. If you start your workday when everyone else does, you’ll be trying to perform and produce in the most difficult of circumstances.

Even the most efficient businessperson will lose the upper hand to the “busy-ness” of the average workday. If you try to optimize the hours between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. beyond a certain point, you are fighting your daily battle to succeed while dealing with interruptions, urgencies and employee challenges. You already know how these can wreak havoc on your time.

Once you use your early morning power hour for long-term goal activities, your enemy (busy-ness) can never take them away.

Above is an excerpt from the book Tall Order! Seven Master Strategies to Organize Your Life and Double Your Success in Half the Time. You can purchase it here, here and here.

 

Honorée turns service providers into rainmakers, average producers into rock-stars, and dreams into reality. For more information on how she can specifically help you or your organization, click here.