
What Successful People Do With The First Hour Of Their Work Day - codelion
http://www.fastcompany.com/3000619/what-successful-people-do-first-hour-their-work-day?goback=.gde_37888_member_154739793
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Tyrannosaurs
> Robbins suggests setting up an “Hour of Power,” “30 Minutes to Thrive,” or
> at least “Fifteen Minutes to Fulfillment.”

If I don't have time for that, can I try "5 minutes of self help drivel"?

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jfoutz
No. It's neither an alliteration nor a rhyme. 5 minutes of jive might have
worked a couple of decades ago. Five minutes of fail? not bad, just doesn't
sing though.

I think my fave is a half kilosecond of life cheapened.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
If I were Robbins I'd start my day looking in a mirror and laughing myself
silly for 10 minutes about how much money I'd made spouting this nonsense.

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ZoFreX
> [I ask myself] "If today were the last day 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.

Really? If today were the last day of my life I'd do things very, very
differently - I can't imagine that answer _ever_ being "yes".

~~~
ismarc
I have two tattoos that I got in response to an extremely close friend getting
shot and killed by his father-in-law after being threatened by him for quite
some time. It was a child custody dispute (long backstory), but the threats
were if he didn't drop the lawsuit (? not sure what the word is for the trial
to get custody from someone) he would kill my friend and my friend's wife (the
murderer's daughter). My friend refused to on the principle that he could
never let someone like that have custody of a kid. My friend was killed two
days after the judgement giving him and his wife custody.

The tattoos are on my forearms and say "love life" and "embrace death". It's
the inevitability of death and living your life in a manner that at the moment
of your death, you can look back and be proud of the decisions you made. It
doesn't mean live today as if it were your last, it means live it such that if
it turned into your last, you have no regrets. And if you have any regrets in
your past, fix them.

It quickly became second nature to consider all decisions on this axis, and if
the result of a decision made you regret it, fix it quickly.

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munin
> “If something urgently needs my attention, someone will call or text me.”

this probably works when you're the CEO/founder. when you're not, you probably
don't want a reputation as "the guy who never checks his email" ...

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bones6
I really think it would be hard for anyone to notice you and glorify you with
a reputation as the "guy who never checks email before 9am". That old quote ..
'no one thinks about you as much as you do' comes to mind. He just said give
it an hour, not forever.

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_delirium
It's reasonable as advice, but as an empirical answer to what successful
people do with the first hour of their work day, I'd be interested in some
less-anecdotal data. Are these five really representative of what successful
people do with the first hour of their work day? I suspect that they aren't,
and that if you did a proper survey you would find more boring results, e.g. a
lot of successful people spending their first hour at work checking and
responding to email, in meetings, etc.

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akg
Interestingly there seems to be a recent trend of not being a slave to your
email, twitter, FB, etc. I suppose people are starting to realize that urgent
things don't necessarily come from these mediums and as much as we have come
to rely on them, they provide us with more noise than useful data.

I've been trying to check email twice daily at scheduled times and respond to
emails in "batch" instead of as they come in. It's definitely increased the
number of "concentrated" hours I put into a task.

~~~
johnchristopher
It's a wild guess but I am pretty sure that this "trend" always makes a come-
back at the end of holidays or vacations.

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jimmytucson
I can't help but wonder what happened to "Shit, Shower, and Shave".

~~~
floppydisk
There's an app for that.

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calgaryeng
I think the real key here is _focus_ ... Meandering on Twitter for your first
hour isn't going to get you anywhere.

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Spytap
What SOME successful people happen to do with the first hour of their day.
Correlation != Causation.

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espinchi
I've been trying hard to apply the "don't check e-mail/FB/Twitter/HN/etc until
11am" rule.

In my expericence, the later you open that gigantic can of worms, the better
off you are. By far.

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malandrew
I love the juxtaposition of this post with the one that currently follows it
on the front page (at least for me):
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4453030>

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npguy
This is very, very debatable. Solid product ideas come from cross-pollination
of existing ones. How do you get existing ideas in your thought stream if you
do not getyour inputs right? (in this case, email/twitter/facebook)

~~~
codelion
The article doesn't say that we should never check our email/twitter/Facebook.
It is about structuring and scheduling your day right from the start.

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digitalengineer
You could also add 'reading HN' to e-mail / twitter / facebook. HN can be
dubble as addictive due to the good comments. You now want to read the
articles and the comments.

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timedoctor
Not checking email first thing is really hard to do! I manage to do it (just)
but it requires an immense amount of discipline and easy to slip back into bad
habits.

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eckyptang
Its not a bad habit. A whole army of blog posts have spawned around this
fallacy which annoys the hell out of me.

It works for some but a lot of people rely on email as a primary communication
medium. You just look like an asshole to your customers and colleagues.

