Daily Habits and Morning Routines of Successful Executives and CEOs

Daily Habits and MorningRoutines

of Successful Executives and CEOs

What makes successful people successful?Jim Citrin of Yahoo! Finance wanted to studythe daily habits and routine of 20 CEOs. He

received complete answers to his survey from17 out of the 20 CEO’s he queried, and there

were some very noticeable patterns thatformed when you look at the routines of all ofthese successful people. Here are some of the

results:

Wake up early.

This is the time of day where most people find that they havethe ability to take control of the day. There’s a couple reasonsbehind this. One is that science has proven that humans are

limited with our self-control. The strength of self-control drawsfrom a well that gets depleted over time. Kind of like a muscle,it gets fatigued after too much exertion. Getting up early and

getting the things that are most important or most unpleasantto do earlier in the day makes us more likely to accomplish

them. The other reason is that no one but you can makedemands on your time in the early morning. Once businesshours start, or the family wakes up, anything can happen todemand your attention and pull focus away from your tasks.None of the executives studied got up after 6am. Most alarms

were set between 4:30 and 5:30am.

Tip: Try not checking messages or emails first thing in the day,wait until you have accomplished several things on your to-do

list first. Messages from others make you beholden to thepeople and potential problems that will hijack your focus from

your productive hours and put you in reactive mode. If it isurgent, they will call you.

Exercise daily.

More than 70% of the business leaders surveyed performexercise in the morning, the rest fit it in during the day, atlunch, or at night before bed. Almost none of them did notexercise at least a small amount on a regular basis. Anna

Wintour, Editor In Chief of Vogue starts each day at 5:45am withan hour long tennis match. Some people’s schedules onlyinvolved a few minutes of stretching or a quick walk to getcoffee. You can find the activity and time commitment to

match your schedule and personal tastes, but it’s better to getthe blood flowing every day.

Tip: Keep a glass of water by your bedside and drink the wholething before you even turn off your alarm. Dehydration can

cause fatigue and fuzzy thinking. Often times when you wakeup groggy it isn’t because you need more sleep, it’s because

you need more water.

Make a “Tomorrow List”.

Before you leave the office each day, write down the tasks youneed to complete each day. Put it right in the middle of your

desk, or tape it to your computer monitor so it’s the first thingyou see each day. Look at the list and use it to base your daily

strategy off of. Before you leave the office, end your day bywriting tomorrow’s list. This keeps you on track and you walkinto your day with tasks already planned out and slept on. If

you make your lists first thing in the morning, you use upvaluable early-morning time.

Tip: Even if you know you are not going to get to it that day, ifyou know it needs to get done, write it down on your “tomorrowlist” anyway. It will help keep it fresh in your mind, and if you

keep transferring it from to-do list to to-do list eventuallyyou’ll find time to get it done simply so you don’t have to keep

writing that to-do down anymore!

One simple question.

Steve Jobs gave a commencement speech to Stanford in 2005where he revealed one of his motivational tactic that he used

to start each day. “For the past 33 year, I have looked in themirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the lastday of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”And whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a

row, I know I need to change something.”

Tip: Ask yourself the same thing in the morning. Does thatchange your to-do list?