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Master Your Morning Power Hour Routine for a Successful Day Ahead

A morning power hour can easily be integrated into any system you already do. There are tremendous benefits to completing a power hour. You will also find it will make you more effective and efficient. That is the goal of Systemize Your Life. Creating efficient and effective systems for your home and business is the entire goal of Systemize Your Life and Systemize Your Biz.

As moms, we can do an extraordinary job at everything we are called to do. However, sometimes this means we must get rid of a few things or maybe get more serious about things. It can also mean we must make hard decisions and get super disciplined. A morning power hour can help you with all of this. 

Navigating the Juggles of Work

It can be challenging to juggle all of the things. Working in corporate and leaving the home is super difficult in its own way. Then again, working from home is challenging in other ways—ways you never really expect. They both have pros and cons. Personally, I find more pros in what I do now as a work-from-home mom than what I was doing before in corporate. Honestly, that is why I’ve worked so hard to continue to do it. It’s also what I feel I should be doing. 

You can find efficiencies within your day when you work outside the home. When you become a work-from-home mom, you quickly realize that there is no time to actually work. Having to work and not having time to dedicate to work is a problem. Like many moms, we find ways around that. We find the mom cracks in the day that allow us to navigate being a mom and working from home.  

Managing Your Time 

If you are relentless in your pursuit to find time to work at home, you will find time. Start by cutting back on things that aren’t necessary. Concentrate only on the super necessary things. Typically this can create a time and space where nothing necessary needs to be done. During this void, is where you can insert your work. Honestly, this is where the five-block method for time blocking comes from. Within this five-block method is where the idea for a power hour came from. 

Rise and Thrive

So, for this morning power hour to work, you must start getting up earlier than your kids. A lot of times, this means having to get to bed earlier as well. Honestly, I’m not a morning person. I get so much clarity at night, and I love how working at night feels. Truly, sometimes I feel like I could work into the wee hours of the morning. I get laser focused and super creative. 

I’ve always enjoyed everything that night entails, but as I woke up earlier, I realized I also love things about the early morning hours. I absolutely love the sunrise, and I love being up before everyone else. You will start to thrive when you begin integrating a morning power hour into your day. I suggest gamifying it to see how many tasks you can hammer out in your hour.

“You will start to thrive when you begin integrating a morning power hour into your day.”

Morning Power Hour: 3 Activities to Avoid for Maximum Productivity

By implementing the morning power hour, you learn what serves you well in the morning and what doesn’t serve you well. It would be best not to put certain things into your power hour of work. Literally, I mean hard on the no within a sixty-minute block. Stay under an hour. You can always go under if needed but don’t go over an hour. Honestly, you can use your power hour in many ways. For example, take care of something extra that popped up, read something, or do nothing at all. However, there are three things you should absolutely not be doing in your power hour. 

#1: Steer Clear of Social Media

Jumping on social media during your power hour is hard no. Social media is a vortex that you have no power over. We always think, “Oh, I’m just going to be in and be out!” Unfortunately, we never are. You blink, and an hour has gone by! Then, you’ve spent your entire power hour on meaningless, stupid stuff. Not to mention how it warps your thinking for the rest of the day.

#2: Sidestep Starting Projects

Starting projects is never a good way to use your morning power hour. Scientifically, studies show that it takes at least 30 minutes to get into a creative state in our brain. This shows that it takes a bit of time to get into a zone of really deep diving into a project. Typically this is called the “flow state.” There are systems and routines you can put in place to expedite your flow state. However, using half of your power hour to get to your creative space just to come back out of it would be super frustrating. 

Project work is intended to take bigger chunks of time. This way, you can dive in and get the meat of the project done. Save the projects for your other time blocks, not your power hour.

#3: Avoid Fixating on Your Weekly and Monthly Tasks

Your power hour is not a space for you to start the day’s work and try to get ahead of the day. 

You don’t need to focus on your weekly and monthly tasks. For example, client work like creating contracts and sending estimates isn’t a must-do during your hour. If it is small enough, it may be okay. Working on creating posts that need to go out today or next week, or getting caught up on yesterday’s work, may or may not be okay to add in. Overdue work is not something you want to throw into your hour block. 

Sitting down to try and write an entire blog, plan out a podcast, or create YouTube content are also not what you want to add to your morning power hour. You may need to finish those things today, but it shouldn’t be during your power hour. Specifically, we just talked about projects. Starting a project and trying to dive in for thirty minutes to an hour isn’t smart. Add that to your work block. 

Why You Need a Task Management System With Your Power Hour

Planning out what needs to be done and when it needs to be done takes utilizing a complete task management system for your business. Having an entire task management system for your business lets you be super organized to know what must be done every day and when. It takes away all of that overwhelm that you’re constantly juggling.

A task management system will quickly become a non-negotiable for your business. All the fretting and sweating or sitting down at your computer to start “planning” your day will disappear. Worrying about how much I will get done today or where you will cram work will ease. It is so refreshing to sit down to work and know precisely what you should be doing. 

If you are interested in getting a task management system for your business, make sure to visit chelsijo.co/SYB. You can get a four-week complete task management system to automate your daily, weekly, and monthly tasks. Building a one-stop shop for all those things in one workflow is a game changer. Not to mention, Systemize Your Biz gives you a tracking system for your new clients and customers and all the events happening in your business. Plus, automating all of your marketing content.

You’ll learn how to set up a simple content calendar for your Instagram, Facebook, podcasts, email lists, and any platforms you use for your business. It also allows you to learn what your business needs to grow. Having this system will enable you to focus on tasks that matter and the projects that will move the needle in your business.

Maximize Your Morning Power Hour: 3 Essential Steps for Peak Productivity

Here are the three things that you really, really want to do during your morning power hour. I’ve tested this on myself and multiple others consistently using their morning power hour. Almost everyone on my team and other CEOs also use this with their operation. These three things are a great rule of thumb to try and follow.

#1: Lightning-Fast Wins with Quick Hit To-Do’s 

So the first thing to implement during your morning power hour is your quick hit to-do’s. Again, I cannot repeat this enough. You want to have only one list in your business. You want one list for really quick, rapid-fire things. These are things you can check off in fifteen to twenty minutes.

Remember, these things don’t require you to go into a creative space. Quick hit to-dos don’t need much research or background knowledge. They also don’t require a bunch of open tabs. These are just a few speedy things that can be done within about twenty minutes of your time.

#2: Master Your Inbox and Communication Chaos

Emails and communication are the second things you want to include in your morning power hour. If your inbox is a hairy mess, this might not be a good option for you. Once you have your emails systemized and know exactly how much time you will devote to your emails, it works beautifully. 

A great way to get started is to jump in and start building the system you need each morning. Jump in your emails and spend twenty minutes responding to emails. Move emails out so you don’t have a crazy amount in your inbox. Delete some things or unsubscribe.

If you outsource your emails, this part will be more communication than emails. You may need to communicate with people on your team or send a few messages that aren’t exactly emails. This can look like checking in with Voxer, knowing who needs what, saying good morning to your team, or catching up on family text messages. It’s nice knowing that you have communicated first so that everyone can get their day started with the information they need from you. 

#3: Strategic Work Block Scheduling

The third thing you need to implement is giving yourself some time to look at your work block schedule for the day. If you don’t have a work block that day, you obviously wouldn’t have anything. You can always go over tomorrow’s. The point is to review your workflow and the core things you need to accomplish for the day. 

Ask yourself these questions:

• What does my work block look like today?
• Do I need to be dressed for the day?
• Does it matter where I’m working?
• Do I need to be in my home office, or can I have kids in the background?
• What do I need to prepare for?
• Can I bring my lunch with me?

Work blocks can vary so much daily, so knowing what is coming up helps prepare you. The magical thing about this step is that you will have this done before the kids wake up. When you sit down to your work block later, you will thoroughly pour into your tasks distraction-free. You get to be unbelievably intentional with your time block.

Embrace the Magic of Your Morning Power Hour

You may go through stages where you prefer working during certain parts of the day. Maybe you don’t want to touch a power hour of work in the morning or steer free of work 100% in the early hours. There are other seasons of life when you’re so busy you shift most everything to the morning. 

Truly, you can use this however you want for whatever season you’re in. The point is to have boundaries with the power hour. Ensure you are being strategic with what you put in there.

If you don’t already have a power hour in your day, please try it out and experience the magic. If you’re already doing a power hour, look at what you’re doing in the hour and see if there are any shifts you need to make. Above all, rock your morning power hour with the other productive moms up before everyone else.