{"id":6,"date":"2012-08-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-08-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/persan\/what-successful-people-do-with-the-first-hour-of-their-work-da\/"},"modified":"2026-07-25T19:07:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-25T19:07:27","slug":"what-successful-people-do-with-the-first-hour-of-their-work-da","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/persan\/what-successful-people-do-with-the-first-hour-of-their-work-da\/","title":{"rendered":"What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

What Successful People<\/span><\/strong><\/em> Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day<\/h2>\n
\n
By Kevin Purdy<\/h5>\n
August 22, 2012<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n

How much does the first hour of every day matter? As it turns out, a lot. It can be the hour you see everything clearly, get one real thing done, and focus on the human side of work rather than your task list.<\/h3>\n
\n

Remember when you used to have a period at the beginning of every day to think about your schedule, catch up with friends, maybe knock out a few tasks? It was called home room, and it went away after high school. But many successful people schedule themselves a kind of grown-up home room every day. You should too.<\/p>\n

What Successful People<\/strong><\/em><\/span> Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day<\/h2>\n

The first hour of the workday goes a bit differently for Craig Newmark of Craigslist, David Karp of Tumblr, motivational speaker Tony Robbins, career writer (and Fast Company<\/em> blogger) Brian Tracy, and others, and they\u2019ll tell you it makes a big difference. Here are the first items on their daily to-do list.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t Check Your Email for the First Hour. Seriously. Stop That.<\/h2>\n

Tumblr founder David Karp will \u201ctry hard\u201d not to check his email until 9:30 or 10 a.m., according to an Inc.<\/em> profile of him. \u201cReading e-mails at home never feels good or productive,\u201d Karp said. \u201cIf something urgently needs my attention, someone will call or text me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not all of us can roll into the office whenever our Vespa happens to get us there, but most of us with jobs that don\u2019t require constant on-call awareness can trade e-mail for organization and single-focus work. It\u2019s an idea that serves as the title of Julie Morgenstern\u2019s work management book Never Check Email In The Morning<\/em>, and it\u2019s a fine strategy for leaving the office with the feeling that, even on the most over-booked days, you got at least one real thing done.<\/p>\n

What Successful People<\/strong><\/em><\/span> Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day<\/h3>\n

If you need to make sure the most important messages from select people come through instantly, AwayFind can monitor your inbox and get your attention when something notable arrives. Otherwise, it\u2019s a gradual but rewarding process of training interruptors and coworkers not to expect instantaneous morning response to anything they send in your off-hours.<\/p>\n

Gain Awareness, Be Grateful<\/h2>\n

One smart, simple question on curated Q & A site Quora asked \u201cHow do the most successful people start their day?\u201d. The most popular response came from a devotee of Tony Robbins, the self-help guru who pitched the power of mindful first-hour rituals long before we all had little computers next to our beds.<\/p>\n

Robbins suggests setting up an \u201cHour of Power,\u201d \u201c30 Minutes to Thrive,\u201d or at least \u201cFifteen Minutes to Fulfillment.\u201d Part of it involves light exercise, part of it involves motivational incantations, but the most accessible piece involves 10 minutes of thinking of everything you\u2019re grateful for: in yourself, among your family and friends, in your career, and the like. After that, visualize \u201ceverything you want in your life as if you had it today.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Successful People<\/strong><\/em><\/span> Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day<\/h4>\n

Robbins offers the \u201cHour of Power\u201d segment of his Ultimate Edge<\/em> series as a free audio stream (here\u2019s the direct MP3 download). Blogger Mike McGrath also wrote a concise summary of the Hour of Power). You can be sure that at least some of the more driven people you\u2019ve met in your career are working on Robbins\u2019 plan.<\/p>\n

Do the Big, Shoulder-Sagging Stuff First<\/h2>\n

Brian Tracy\u2019s classic time-management book Eat That Frog<\/em> gets its title from a Mark Twain saying that, if you eat a live frog first thing in the morning, you\u2019ve got it behind you for the rest of the day, and nothing else looks so bad. Gina Trapani explained it well in a video for her Work Smart series). Combine that with the concept of getting one thing done before you wade into email, and you\u2019ve got a day-to-day system in place. Here\u2019s how to force yourself to stick to it:<\/p>\n

Choose Your Frog<\/h2>\n

\u201cChoose your frog, and write it down on a piece of paper that you\u2019ll see when you arrive back at your desk in the morning, Tripani advises.\u201cIf you can, gather together the material you\u2019ll need to get it done and have that out, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

One benefit to tackling that terrible, weighty thing you don\u2019t want to do first thing in the morning is that you get some space from the other people involved in that thing\u2013the people who often make the thing more complicated and frustrating. Without their literal or figurative eyes over your shoulder, the terrible thing often feels less complex, and you can get more done.<\/p>\n

Ask Yourself If You\u2019re Doing What You Want to Do<\/h2>\n

Feeling unfulfilled at work shouldn\u2019t be something you realize months too late, or even years. Consider making an earnest attempt every morning at what the late Apple CEO Steve Jobs told a graduating class at Stanford to do:<\/p>\n

\n

When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: \u201cIf you live each day as if it was your last, someday you\u2019ll most certainly be right.\u201d It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: \u201cIf today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?\u201d And whenever the answer has been \u201cNo\u201d for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cCustomer Service\u201d (or Your Own Equivalent)<\/h2>\n

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark answered the first hour question succinctly: \u201cCustomer service.\u201d He went on to explain (or expand) that he also worked on current projects, services for military families and veterans, and protecting voting rights. But customer service is what Newmark does every single day at Craigslist, responding to user complaints and smiting scammers and spammers. He almost certainly has bigger fish he could pitch in on every day, but Newmark says customers service \u201canchors me to reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Your own version of customer service might be keeping in touch with contacts from year-ago projects, checking in with coworkers you don\u2019t regularly interact with, asking questions of mentors, and just generally handling the human side of work that quickly gets lost between task list items. But do your customer service on the regular, and you\u2019ll have a more reliable roster of helpers when the time comes.<\/p>\n

What do you with the first hour of your workday to increase productivity and reduce stress? Tell us about it in the comments below.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

[Image: Flickr user Thomas Hawk<\/em>]<\/p>\n

P.S If you enjoyed reading my post and you feel you had value from it, please be so kind as to \u2018like\u2019, \u2018share\u2019 and \u2018comment\u2019. My mission is to provide as much service to others as I can.\u00a0 I am inspired by the motto,<\/strong> \u201cWhatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.\u201d ~ Napoleon Hill<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

What Successful People<\/strong><\/em><\/span> Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day<\/h5>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day By Kevin Purdy August 22, 2012 How much does the first hour of every day matter? As it turns out, a lot. It can be the hour you see everything clearly, get one real thing done, and focus on the human side of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":676,"featured_media":18,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[14,6,7,8,20],"class_list":["post-6","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-empower-network","tag-empower-network","tag-home-based-business","tag-marketing","tag-opportunities","tag-successful-people"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/persan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/persan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/persan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/persan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/676"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/persan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/persan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/persan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6\/revisions\/38"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/persan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/persan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/persan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/empowernetwork.com\/persan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}