How To Spend The First and Last 10 Minutes of Your Work Day

How you begin and end your work days is crucial to how the next day or even the rest of the week goes.

It’s taken me years to develop morning and evening routines that help me get the most out of each and every day. I wasn’t always as productive as I am now. As a young entrepreneur, I thought it was about waking up earlier and working longer hours late into the evening, but as I gained more experience over time, I realized that its not just about how many hours you work in a day—it’s how much you get done and how impactful the work you do is.

Now with over ten years of experience under my belt, I follow a strict morning and evening routine everyday that includes things like exercising first thing in the morning, tackling the hardest task before going into the office, and even have time to squeeze in 20 minutes of cartoons. Most days I finish more work in the morning than I do the most of the day.

If you want to have a more productive day, week, or month, follow the recommendations outlined below:

How You Should Start Each Work Day

Here’s how you should spend the first 10 minutes of your work day:

Don’t Check Your Email, Texts or Facebook

Julie Morgenstern, author of Never Check E-Mail in the Morning: And Other Unexpected Strategies for Making Your Work Life Work, suggests that you shouldn’t check email first thing – at home or work. Instead, try and start your day with a singular focus and a task you can cross off your checklist right away.

Why avoid your email in particular? According to Ron Friedman, a social psychologist, writing for Psychology Today:

“These activities hijack our focus and put us in a reactive mode, where other people’s priorities take center stage. It’s the equivalent of entering a kitchen and looking for a spill to clean or a pot to scrub.”

Personally, I like to use my mornings to focus on love, inspiration and learning. Instead of diving straight into work, I find that watching an inspirational TED Talk video or brushing up on a new skill puts me in the right frame of mind to make the rest of the day a success.

Plan for Success

For maximum productivity, try starting each day with a planning session.

Once you arrive at work, sit at your desk and arrange your “station,” just as a chef or other artisan would.

Set yourself up for success by taking a few moments to focus on the tasks you want to accomplish, rather than immediately reacting to problems or issues that others bring you.

Make a list.

Whether it’s on your phone, on a whiteboard or on an actual piece of paper, write down your priorities so that they can remain your top focus throughout the day.

Make Big Decisions

Make your big decisions at the start of the day, if you can.

Use the time and the quiet to clear your head and decide how you’ll move forward with a new product idea or what you’ll do about hiring the new employee you need. Whatever large decisions are weighing on your mind, don’t let a crisis (or two or three) during the day dictate the way you make those types of decisions.  

Get them out of the way first thing in the morning.

Eat Frogs For Breakfast

This is a well-known concept in the world of business made popular by Brian Tracy in his book Eat That Frog!

It basically works like this: when you get to work in the morning, you should always try to attack your most important or challenging projects and tasks first. He refers to these projects as your frogs. It’s easy to keep pushing a project to the next day, or the next, or even the next simply because you never feel like you have enough time in your day to get it done. If you have a task or project like this that’s been on your to-do list for a long time, commit to finally getting it done tomorrow, and start working on it right when you get into the office.

How You Should End Each Work Day

Here’s how you should spend the last 10 minutes of your work day:

Finish Up Small Projects

If you’ve used your morning to set your priorities and tackle big issues, there’s a good chance you’ll be running out of steam as the work day comes to a close.

Use this time to respond to quick emails, file paperwork or handle the other small projects that come with running a company (or working any job, for that matter). Not only will this help you fully utilize time that might otherwise be wasted, it’ll help clear the clutter out of your mind so that the next day can be even more productive.

Reflect on the Day

Plan for the end of your work day and set aside the last 10 minutes to sit back and reflect on what went well in the day, what you’re still waiting for, and what needs to happen tomorrow.

Knowing that you’ve prepared as well as possible for tomorrow will help you leave the day behind and put you in a good mood for the rest of the evening.

Get Out

While it’s great to chat with your employees and talk about the day, don’t linger, says Lynn Taylor, author of Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job. “Staying around for no good reason will limit your level of energy and success when you need it tomorrow,” Taylor says. Get out and go back to your life. Leaving work at work as much as possible will help you balance your work and home lives well.

Are any of these activities part of your morning or afternoon work routines? If not, share how you start and end your work days in the comments section below!

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Sujan has over 12 years of digital marketing experience and has helped companies like Sales Force, Intuit and many other Fortune 500 caliber companies increase their web traffic, boost user acquisition, and grow their businesses. He’s currently the VP of Marketing at When I Work, the top rated employee scheduling software.

Nearly half a million people in over 50 countries rely on When I Work for employee scheduling, time clock and communication. Start a 30-day free trial with When I Work today!