Do you feel braver in the morning?
I was on the phone with a coaching client last week and she was talking about cold calling a few prospective clients.
She told me she made the calls first thing in the morning because she "felt braver in the morning".
That struck me as an interesting moment of self-knowledge.
It's good to be self-aware and to understand the cycles we go through each day.
I found it particularly interesting that she felt "braver" first thing each day and put that time aside to deal with tasks that she found hard to do.
How about you? Do you find it easier to tackle scary tasks early in the day?
I do.
I'm not sure it's because I feel braver. But I do know that if I don't get the scary tasks done right away, then as each hour goes by I'll manage to come up with plenty of good reasons to put that task off until tomorrow.
For me this includes scary tasks, boring tasks, depressing tasks and tasks that might involve conflict.
I'm quite adept at avoiding conflict. So if I know I'm going to have to get tough with a copywriting client because they are slow in paying me for some work, my inner conflict-avoidance buddy will do a great job of coming up with reasons to delay the confrontation.
I think we all have areas of our business that trigger internal delaying tactics.
The problem is, delays never really help us.
My coaching client is smart to make her cold calls in the morning when she feels braver.
And in my case I always put the least attractive tasks at the top of my daily to-do list.
I get them done fast simply because I know that if I delay I will simply come up with reasons not to do them at all.
The silly thing is, once these tasks are completed, I feel great and am then super-productive for the rest of the day.
Give some thought to the kinds of tasks that you tend to put off until later.
Then figure out the time of day that would be best for you, psychologically, to get these tasks done.
I'm guessing that for most of us that time will be first thing in the morning.
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