The greatest empires are built in the morning.
If you want to grow your business to massive success, you have to focus on the stuff that matters. And you have to do it when no one is around to bother you.
My man Craig Ballantyne is a master of the morning. We recently chatted about crushing your morning routine and winning the day before it begins. Here are a few of the takeaways you can use to do just that.
Environmental Exposure
That sounds funky, right? Really it just means you should hang out with people who are already where you want to be.
When my morning habits sucked, I hung around Craig. I learned his high-performance tactics firsthand and elevated my routine as a result.
But had I never met Craig, it would have taken me much longer to break out of my old ways: eating dinner late, working late, and struggling to wake up early.
Find a friend or a mentor who has their morning routine dialed in. They’ll help you recognize exactly what you need to fix in your life to level up.
Prepare the Night Before
What you do at night affects how productive your morning will be.
Craig has this trick he calls the “reverse alarm”. He turns off all electronics by 10 PM, so he doesn’t have to deal with any Debby Downer emails or texts before he falls asleep.
You have to protect your sleep. All you have to do is shut your phone off before anyone can bug you. You’ll get better sleep and wake up ready to crush your to-do list.
That’s another thing: I map out my to-do list ahead of my mornings. Put the most important things you need to get done on the top of that list. That’s what you want to use your deep work time for—the stuff that will move your business forward.
Don’t Hit Snooze
You know what hitting the snooze tells the world? It tells everyone that that person values 10 minutes of extra sleep—low-quality sleep, at that—over accomplishing and surpassing their business’s mission.
But when you wake up and ignore the snooze, you start off your day with a big win.
So find that setting in your phone where you can disable the snooze button. Don’t tempt yourself one bit.
And if you still have trouble getting up and into the zone, do something to wake yourself up. For me, it’s taking a shower, drinking an egg white protein shake with coffee and water, and playing fetch in the backyard with my dog, Cookie.
Figure out the activities and resources you need to be alert and focused and form a routine around those things.
Silence Your Phone
Phones can trick people into thinking they’re doing productive work. when in reality, all they’re doing is scrolling their Instagram feed.
Before you start your deep work in the morning, put your phone away. That takes a lot of discipline, but you’re capable of doing it.
If you want to build an empire, you have to go extreme in everything you do. So if you need to put your phone in a locked drawer on the other side of the house, do it.
Don’t let anything get in the way of your vision.
Want to learn more? Click here to listen to the full-length episode that Craig Ballantyne and I shot about honing in your morning routine.