I hate mornings. Can you relate? I’m sure some of you can. I would much rather stay in bed until I am shamed out from under the covers by my demanding feline masters. Working from home and working for yourself comes with it’s challenges, and my big challenge is getting out of bed and staying out of bed (where are my nappers?). How I start my day is extremely important since, as it does for everyone, it sets the tone for the day. Here’s how I rock my AMs. Or trudge through them, let’s be honest.

MY SCHEDULE
I don’t really have a set schedule, since I try to spend time with my boyfriend before he goes to work, and his work schedule can change from day to day. That being said, a pretty typical day looks roughly like this:

8:00am – 10:00am: Somewhere in here I get up eat breakfast, work out, and do some light reading.
10:00am – 12:00pm: Daily planning, social media, cleaning the workspace and other small tasks.
12:00pm – 2:00pm: Client work, upcoming deadlines.
2:00pm – 3:00pm: Lunch!
3:00pm – 7:00pm: More Client work, blogging, transition out of work
7:00pm: FINISHED

Now, some days look a little different depending on if I have errands to run, appointments or sessions with clients. If I am in the office all day, this is pretty much how my day looks.

GETTING STARTED
The thing that motivates me to get out of bed is food. Food is a powerful motivator and the next best thing to sleeping in a cozy bed is eating some fresh toast and having some coffee or tea. After breakfast, getting a quick workout in helps to wake up my senses and kind of get things flowing. Doing some reading and journaling gets me to engage intellectually, and prepares me for the emotional task of creating.

When I sit down at my desk, I sometimes like to wake up the creative brain if it’s not already awake by doing a drawing exercise in my book, “642 Things to Draw.” This engages me creatively. After a quick sketch, I move forward and work on social media, plan my day, tidy my workspace, and so some other short and small tasks. This eases me into my work day. As I said, I hate mornings, so there’s no diving in the deep end at 8am for me. We’re easing into it starting at 10.

Me getting started is like flying a plane as opposed to driving a car. When you drive a car, you just hop in and go. When you fly a plane you have a lot of steps to getting off the ground. First you have to walk around the plane to make sure there’s nothing loose or missing and everything is working properly. Then you start it up and run through a second checklist, then right before you take off, you make a quick run through of yet another checklist. I’m more like flying a plane in the morning. I have to get each system up and running in stages.

FULL THROTTLE
I’m running at full throttle by about noon. At this point I work on client work for about two hours then break for lunch. It seems silly but like I said, I don’t dive in. After lunch, I continue working till about 6:00 pm. I try to finish up little tasks and looming deadlines first, and then get ahead on client work that isn’t due for awhile.

WINDING DOWN
Around 6:00 pm, I take on some more personal tasks, such as brand development, blogging and working on goals. This allows me to put some mental space between me and my client work so that I’m not getting off work thinking about a pressing deadline or how I’m going to execute a certain part of a design. In short, it’s about boundaries. It allows me to set some semblance of boundaries with my work. When you work from home, it’s really easy to blur the lines between your work/office and your home. Transitioning yourself back to you at the end of a day worked at home is a necessary part of establishing that work-life balance. Using your wrap-up time as a boundary has proven to be effective for me.

THE KEY TO A PRODUCTIVE DAY
The key to a productive day is working when you work best. In American Culture we have accepted that 8-5 is when you work, and morning people are given a moral edge over not-as-morning-people. To me that’s ridiculous, because, to state the obvious, not everyone functions on the same productivity schedule. I’m more of a night owl. I get my best sleep when I go to bet around 11 or midnight and wake up around 8 or 9. The other thing to consider is that everyone needs varying degrees of rest, and gets going for the day at different paces. My dad could set the alarm, and when it would sound, he’d get up. He wasn’t friends with the snooze button. As for me, I have to do everything gradually for anything to work. I have to hit snooze a couple times. I have to wake up gradually, I have to slowly transition into my day without rigid time boundaries, and then I have to slowly transition out of my work day. The key is knowing when you work best and taking advantage of that time by building your schedule around it.

What if you work in a traditional office setting? You can do this, too! When I worked at Gannett, I was lucky to work the evening shift in a way, because it fit the time of the day when I work best. Now, there were a lot of things wrong with me working for Gannett, but being scheduled when I normally do my best work was a great thing. If you work in an office setting and need to transition like I do, look at the smaller, less relevant tasks you do everyday and split them up between the beginning of your day and the end. When I worked at Gannett, I would start my day by cleaning my desk, then pouring myself a cup of coffee and filling my water bottle. After that, I would check my email, and choose a playlist, a podcast or a livestream to tune into. Little things like that can help you ease into your day. Even if you don’t have the freedom to work your own hours in your own space, doing the small tasks like this can help get your engines started and warmed up.

Now, If you’ll excuse me, I have to clean up my office area and transition into my workday. And if you are working from home and still trying to get a good rhythm down, check out my tips for working at home!