Do the most important thing in the morning.

The first step is to find out what your goal is. Is it starting a business? Is it acquiring a new skill or a language? What is it that you’re striving for?

Then, the second step is to ask yourself: “what is the thing I need to do that by doing it, it would massively move me towards my goal?”

There might be many things to move you towards your goal or even different goals. You need to find the one that’s the most important one.

If you have multiple goals and passions, it may be particularly hard to choose one, because you want to do them all. That’s a curse and a blessing at the same time.

However, there can only be one thing that has priority over everything else.

What can help you - and helped me - is to take out a pen and paper and write down all your goals and things you want to do. Then start eliminating them one-by-one. Ask yourself: “If I have to get rid of one, which one would it be?”. Do that until there’s only one item left.

The remaining item should not necessarily be the thing you want to do the most (but could be), but the most important thing. Something that if you’d achieve it, everything else would become easier or even unnecessary.

The third step is to do that thing as the first thing in the morning - or at least as soon as possible after waking up.

The morning is a perfect time to do it as you have full energy, full willpower, and everything’s just calm and more predictable.

The day brings chaos and unpredictable variables into our lives that can easily ruin plans. E.g., you have a plan to do your thing in the evening, but then a friend calls you and wants to hang out with you. Needless to say, your energy levels are depleted as the day progresses.

By doing your thing in the morning, you basically guarantee that you do it every day. This way, you’ll constantly be moving towards your dream, even if slowly.

For a long time, I did the wrong things in the morning, leaving the most important thing for the evening. I chose to do the things I wanted to do, but they weren’t necessarily the things that would move towards my goal.

Many people unknowingly do things that can easily be left to be done in the evening - like cleaning or doing the laundry. These and similar actions do not require much thinking and focus but still deplete our energy. Don’t do chores in the morning!

It’s best to do things that require deep though as early as possible and leave mentally less demanding things to the evening.

This, of course, doesn’t mean you can’t also do it in the evening as well. You can, and if you have the time and means, then you should. But doing it in the morning is a sort of a guarantee that you’ll always do it.

Besides, doing the most important thing early, makes you feel a lot better throughout the day as you know that you’ve been productive and did what you needed to do.

I think Brian Tracy talks about this in his book “Eat That Frog!” but I haven’t read this one. Instead, I heavily based this article on “The One Thing” by Gary Keller and “What the Most Successful People Do Before Breakfast” by Laura Vanderkam. I definitely recommend checking these books out. They’re a quick read and might change your life forever.

KRISTJAN