6 Tips to Simplify Your Workday

Your morning routine is an important habit to develop that sets the tone for the day and can be a huge factor in boosting your mental health or helping you balance work, family and your personal life. By following a morning routine, you are shifting your mind’s focus from your home or personal life and signaling the transition into the workday.

Everyone's morning routine looks different, but here are a few ideas to help you get started:

Many people keep a running to-do list of tasks that only seems to get longer as the day goes on. When your list doesn't end, it can understandably start to feel overwhelming and like you're not getting anything done. To help keep yourself focused and feeling accomplished, set one main priority for the day. Write it down in a visible spot and enjoy that sweet feeling of accomplishment when you cross it off.

When your meetings are scheduled intermittently throughout the day, it can be challenging to find a good amount of time to spend, undistracted, on any one task. Bouncing around from meetings to short work stints and back doesn't give your brain enough time to settle in and start something, let alone finish it. By scheduling your meetings in chunks in the morning or afternoon, you leave yourself blocks of time that can be used to focus on one task, uninterrupted.

Whether it's weekly, monthly or quarterly, we've all got those recurring meetings that gobble up time. Review your schedule and see if there's any overlap between teams or projects. Consider the way the last few meetings have gone. Does the frequency still work? Could the discussion be handled via email instead? When meetings stand for weeks or months, it can be easy to keep the routine going even though a lot may have changed since they were first initiated. You may find meetings that you can eliminate or delegate to other teammates to be more efficient with your time.

This one may sound counter-intuitive, but hear us out. At the end of the day, you'll have a better idea of what items on your list are the most pressing and what can be saved for later in the week. By creating your to-do list before you leave, you can go home and relax knowing you have an actionable plan to tackle the things that will need your attention tomorrow. In the morning when you get to work, you won't have to waste valuable time planning your day and assessing what's important, because you'll have a list of items to get you going right away.

Working non-stop without a break is a sure way to build stress and anxiety. By scheduling personal breaks, you can help avoid burnout and physically or mentally refresh yourself to be more productive for the rest of the day. Taking a break after 75 or 90 minutes of work may help your brain consolidate information and retain it better. Breaks don't have to be long, even 15 minutes is helpful, but they can be an important part of a healthy routine.

Some options for a break could be:

If you're interested in returning to school and wondering how it can fit into your schedule, learn how we can help you balance work, school and your personal life with our student resources.