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Earlier this year I listened to a Mel Robbins podcast about having a “million dollar morning routine”. The podcast is titled “A Toolkit for Creating the Perfect Morning Routine” dated 2/13/23 and the link is here. She talked about 5 (easy) components to her morning routine, the importance and benefits of having a morning routine, and the fact that it allows you to feel like YOU, wherever you happen to be starting your day. The 50 minute podcast has some great takeaways if you’re interested, but, for now, I would like to focus on the very last piece of her routine. It is referred to as the Progress Principal and, apparently, it has been studied at Harvard Business School. First let me quickly lay the groundwork by at least mentioning the first four components of her recommended regimen. In a nutshell, her plan can be summarized like this: 1)The 5 second rule, 5-4-3-2-1, get up and out of bed! Don’t hit snooze. Get up for YOU. 2) Make your bed. Start your day with the win, etc. 3) High-five yourself in the mirror (she does a whole other episode on this alone). In other words, show up for yourself with intention. 4) Move your body and your mind for 5-10 minutes with any kind of physical activity and some kind of mindset practice. IMPORTANT NOTE: Do all of this BEFORE YOU LOOK AT YOUR PHONE!!! (she goes into all the reasons for that. If you want to listen to the whole thing, click here. It’s great!) So the FINAL piece is what I really want to share. It’s called the Progress Principal, but personally I call it my “progress piece”. I love this! Let me tell you how it works!. Again, you want to do this before you look at any email, texts, or social media on your phone! Resist allowing the world to invade and distract you away from your time and energy meant to be used in setting yourself up properly for the day. With that understood, take 5/10/15 minutes each morning to move the proverbial “ball” down the field on something that’s important to you. Let me explain this a bit further and why I think it’s such a great idea! 1. You are identifying something that is important to you. It’s not so much about getting things done as it is about figuring out what is important to you and why. What matters to you? Why does it matter to you? Let’s move that a little further along each day. Let’s dedicate 5-15 minutes every morning to it, enjoy the daily feeling of fulfillment, convert small snippets of time and effort into bigger fruition. 2. You are turning a little daily effort into BIG long-term gain. Let’s say that again in a different way. Know that these little moves, done as consistently as possible, add up to MAJOR CHANGE! You might not see it right away, but you will feel accomplished daily, and will eventually see great RESULTS from your good habit. Period! 3. You are breaking big things apart into little bite-sized pieces. Ultimately you will get good at taking the big projects, cracking them open, and reorganizing them into smaller pieces. Slowly chipping away at the learning, studying and moving things forward, increasing momentum to complete just about anything. ANYTHING!!! Do I do this every day? No!!! But that is the intention! I’ve found that deciding the night before how to spend those 5-15 minutes the next morning makes it much easier to be more consistent. It eliminates wasting time choosing what to “move” on in that moment. You already know! This concept is not hard. Give it a try! If you fall off, introduce it again. Totally worth it! |