Choose a coffee project

How to score a win to start your day

We’ve probably all heard the advice that we should “never check email in the morning,” to quote the classic Julie Morgenstern book. We should also “put first things first,” as the late Steven Covey recommends.

Both of these are excellent ideas. However, good advice notwithstanding, I know that many of us still start our workdays by grabbing a cup of coffee, sitting down at our desks, and then processing whatever email has come in.

Sometimes this makes sense. If that 10 a.m. meeting is canceled, you want to know! If Joe is out and you’ll be on the hook to present, you want to know that too. Or maybe your colleague Hans in Germany has been working for 5 hours already and you want to see what he’s gotten done so you can weigh in before he calls it quits for the day.

But by the time you’ve processed what’s come in, more will come in. Then it will be time for various morning meetings. It’s easy to get to lunch, or even the end of the workday, feeling like nothing has moved forward.

Finding the middle ground

In this day and age, I doubt anyone will “never check email in the morning” (Julie Morgenstern included — her book is a much broader look at taking control of your time, even if people mostly remember the pithy title!) — but there is often a middle ground on these things.

One approach is to choose what I call a “coffee project.”

The idea is that you decide, at the end of the workday, what you’ll do before you finish your first cup of coffee in the morning. Choose a project that will take about half an hour or so, and that you know you’ll have the energy and resources to do right away. The satisfaction you get from completing that first coffee project will give you the momentum to proceed productively through the day. And then you still have plenty of time to process all that email, check in with Hans before he heads home, and so forth.

Everyone’s coffee projects will be different, of course. I often draft a blog post. Someone else might plan the agenda for an important meeting. Someone else might review a report or look at all the sales data from the last month so she can bring some new insights to the next meeting on that.

Choose well

Whatever it is, you’re going for a small- to medium-sized task that you can knock out first thing. Ideally it’s something you can do without needing information or guidance from a colleague — because the goal is to stay out of your inbox — and without having to wait for a stroke of inspiration.

Finish your coffee project though, and you’ll have scored at least one win for the day. Whatever else happens, that task will be done. You’re being pro-active instead of reactive, and that’s a good mindset to take through the next few hours.