Power Hour: How my first hour at work ensures I'm focused, productive and creative all day long.

As you may well know by now, I'm all about creating systems and repeatable processes that reduce the amount of mental energy I exert on the minutiae and low-import tasks. The way I spend my first working hour is one of these systems that primes me for the rest of the day. Here' what it looks like (It doesn’t always take place between 8-9am, the schedule below is just an example of how the hour is broken up):

8:00 to 8:05 - My Schedule. Each morning I look at the schedule that I prepped at the end of the day before to see what I have due and any appointments I have. For this, I recommend you search "Bullet Journaling"…it's a flexible, adaptable process that my creative brain doesn't feel overly-constrained by. 

8:05-8:20 - Free-write about my day. This is a basic braindump that allows me to quickly think through my expectations for the day, as well as highlight areas where I might not be properly informed. 

8:20-8:25 - Generate my Creative Inputs List for the day. This is 20 words related to my tasks for the day, 20 unrelated words and 10 random images pulled from Flickr. This is the single most powerful key I've discovered to eliminate writer's block and generate unique ideas on command. 

8:25-8:45 - Read/Consume something completely unrelated to my job or tasks for the day. This could be an article in National Geographic or part of a documentary. 

8:45-9:00 - Skim news/headlines related to my job and/or tasks for the day. 

This process is all about preparing my mind to handle the amount of information I will be absorbing during the day and to boost my creativity for the concepting, writing and other creative tasks on my plate. To summarize it, this first hour is designed to assess my schedule, brain-dump the anxieties and typical low-hanging creative fruit, introduce a few dozen related and unrelated ideas to begin knocking around in my subconscious, giving off those sparks that most people mistake for "divine inspiration." It also gives me the tools I need to quickly, efficiently and creatively complete my tasks for the day.

Do you have a ritual you use to start your day off? Share it in the comments below.