Before Heading For Work

Doing more healthy things before work each day improves the day rather than eating into it. It may be time to change the shape of your morning, and you will not know until you try.

Making time at the start of a working day is genuinely difficult. Between finding the motivation to get out of bed, handling whatever the house needs, and bracing for what work will ask, the morning can feel like a running reminder that there are not enough hours.

Start it well and two things follow. You focus better on the tasks in front of you, and you enjoy the day instead of merely getting through it.

Get outside

Unless your job takes you between meetings, the odds are that from the moment you board your train until you finally rise from your desk, you will be indoors and in one position.

That makes going outside first a necessity rather than a luxury. Set the alarm half an hour earlier. Run if you are a runner and walk if you are not. There is very little to match being out in the calm of early morning, before anyone else is up.

Switch off

Email, social media and the wish to be reachable at all hours mean most of us never entirely switch off.

Having work email on your phone earns its place during your contracted hours. It earns nothing at five in the morning, and one demanding message from a manager at that hour can spoil the whole morning. Keep work email off until you are actually at work.

Meditate

Before skipping this one, consider what it offers. It is the ideal moment to slow a racing mind and take a few minutes that belong to you alone, and the calm arrives at once, the instant you rise from the mat.

There is little better than watching the skill grow and gradually acquiring the ability to switch off completely.

Talk to someone

If you are fortunate enough to walk or cycle to work, use the time to ring a family member or a friend. It is a good way to take your mind off whatever is weighing on you, large or small.

Make a list

Even done on the way in. Sketching out ideas for the morning meeting, or drawing up a plan for the day before it starts, saves a great deal of time and a great deal of stress.

Rush constantly and you fall behind on tasks that would have taken half as long had you arrived prepared.

Wake up earlier

Nobody enjoys rushing. It manufactures stress and it pulls attention away from whatever most needed doing.

So set the alarm an hour earlier than strictly necessary. This is easier said than done, and nobody likes leaving a warm bed. But lying in it worrying about the day ahead is not much of a pleasure either.

Aim at a passion project

Your job matters and so does everything you do outside it. The morning has long been regarded as the best hours for creative thinking.

If you have nothing in the pipeline at all, use some of that time for a long hard think about what you have always wanted to do.

Elbert Hubbard put the whole argument in one line. The best preparation for good work tomorrow is to do good work today.