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Being an entrepreneur and owning a business can require a high level of self-discipline, especially when you are the “Rocket Commander” within your company and the one responsible for making sure things go smooth.
Usually, the way you start the day will generally determine the type of the day you will have, and I think one of the best things is to develop a morning or daily routine and keep up with it.
At the same time, we should say that not everyone has the same morning routine because some business owners already have a family, some have kids, other don’t, so everyone have to figure out what works for them.
In order to get to know how business owners within the WordPress ecosystem usually build their morning or daily routine, I spoke with 11 successful entrepreneurs and WordPress business owners who have developed some daily routines. Therewith, I could understand how they boost their productivity, which is the first thing they do in the morning to kick start the day and what keeps them motivated on what they do.
Below you will find a lot of interesting insights and life-hacks about the day-to-day routine of some successful WordPress business owners.
Mario Peshev
CEO, Business and Technical Lead at DevriX | Social: LinkedIn
Which is the first thing you do in the morning?
I’m not really a morning person since most of the team operates in Europe (some team members in Asia) while the majority of our customer base is in the US. I usually wrap up work around 2 am or later, answering customer emails and assigning daily tasks to our assistants in The Philippines. I try to wake up around 10 am. My “morning routine” is pushed back after the initial rush of questions or daily activities with the local team until 11:00 – 11:30 which I handle at home from my living room. Then I have 60-90 minutes before heading to the office or for a meeting. That’s when I take a break, grab a coffee or some breakfast, walk out the dog, take a shower, listen to some music, and sync my schedule for the rest of the day.
Talk in one-two phrases about your daily routine
Most of my day is distributed across time zones – given that we cover about 17 hours between clients and staff from San Francisco through Europe to Thailand. My morning is usually checking on the progress for the past few hours from the team in Asia, and daily planning with the European team, and touching base with EU clients. In the afternoon we sync deliverables and reports that we need to coordinate later with the US peers. I take another break in the afternoon if I don’t have meetings or any emergencies that require my attention. My evenings vary a lot – from easy-going and calm, through sync calls with US clients and long-term planning or consulting, to content production and business development.
Which is a special thing that keeps you motivated on your work & business
I’m lucky to be able to pick priorities and take on different duties in our company. Over the course of a single year I may spend a few months on technical architecture and build internal tools that improve our processes; then switch to lead generation strategies and marketing funnels that would increase our conversions, and end up with hiring or regular webinars/interviews that I’ve postponed for months due to other priorities. Either way, even if there’s a lot of intense work on the table, the main goal is working with incredible customers and helping them out in every way possible. Some tasks may be tedious or boring, but launching a new feature, a redesign or a successful migration that grows our customers’ traffic, user base and revenue is worth every moment spent on implementation. Always look at the bigger picture and focus on your values.
Joshua Strebel
CEO at Pagely | Social: LinkedIn
Which is the first thing you do in the morning?
Kids rule this house. Morning is all about Sally and I wrangling our 2 small boys. Food, clothes, dental hygiene, etc. They go to school a few days a week. On mornings they do not, it is a bit slower and we may just lounge in our jammy’s for a bit and build lego or whatnot. Around 9 AM we start ‘work’.
Talk in one-two phrases about your daily routine
Once in Work mode, it’s a pretty straightforward day: Check email, address any hot items, then settle into whatever ongoing task is in front of me. This week is all about Business Intelligence metrics for me and Sally is focused on the final preparations for PressNomics5. We have all hands standup’s every week, and I meet with our directors every 2 weeks for strategic planning. Besides those meetings I work around the edges of the teams helping where I am needed – staying out of the way. Around 3 PM on school days the kids come home and ‘work’ becomes a bit more challenging – make sure to schedule any calls beforehand. Hard stop at 5 PM every day for dinner, baths, bedtime stories.
Coffee vs. Tea
Coffee for myself, Chia Tea for Sally.
Which is a special thing that keeps you motivated on your work & business
Count myself very fortunate that we were able to design a life where work enables our family time vs. taking away from family time. The whole company follows our lead as a healthy work/life balance is a core value.
James Farmer
CEO at WPMU DEV | Social: LinkedIn
Which is the first thing you do in the morning?
I’ve gone to some serious extremes in my time working at WPMU DEV, from pretty much going 24/7 desperately attempting to deal with crashing servers (I know nothing about servers!) to having fairly long lulls where, to be honest, I spent a lot more time ruminating and fulminating than actually ‘working’.
Talk in one-two phrases about your daily routine
So it’s always hard to say what my particular routine will be at any given moment, let alone how it might be next week. However, right now I’m fairly focused on sanity and, to an extent (although I continue to have an excellent record in hedonism), health. Specifically to me it’s hugely important that I have a routine, and people to answer to, so 3/5 working days you’ll catch me first up down the gym at pretty much the same time every week, followed by the office, a few regular meetings (I’m not a huge fan of meetings so I like to keep them quick) and then generally trying to finish up not too long after 5. Other than that I don’t really stay in touch with the latest WP news that much these days, but do have a nice Feedly setup where I can happily browse stuff and, of course, I pretty much get all the WP news I need from The WhiP You can too!
Coffee vs. Tea
Coffee, black, probably 2 or 3 of them… but never in the afternoon!
Which is a special thing that keeps you motivated on your work & business
I made it to WordCamp EU last year, which was nice, especially to meet so many WPMU DEV-ers, but I’m generally not that into conferences (same as meetings) so tend to spend my downtime seeing my family in the UK, travelling to the odd football tournament, catching up with my daughter in Perth and occasionally, if I can, doing a bit of lying by a beach / pool bar and attempting not to think about work. 🙂 Also, releasing new things and making our members happy.
Andrei Marin
Managing Partner & Mad Scientist at Dream Production | Social: LinkedIn
Which is the first thing you do in the morning?
Most of the times I snooze my alarm. But there are days when I wake up right before the alarm rings. Quite sure everyone has experienced this at one point in their lives. I like those mornings because they remind me of what it is like to be an entrepreneur.
Talk in one-two phrases about your daily routine
Not daily but at least 3 times a week, I run for 30 minutes followed by a session of mindfulness meditation. What I do every day is to read the political headlines and a few industry articles.
Coffee vs. Tea
Neither. I do not like coffee. Tried to start a community for coffee haters but couldn’t find others to join. Which is strange because most coffee drinkers/lovers I know act like they are the minority. Don’t mind me, “it’s just a prank”. I guess I drink more beer than tea on a monthly basis.
Which is a special thing that keeps you motivated on your work & business
I quit relying on motivation in 2011. In my own experience, motivation works for 2 years at most. After some time if you don’t develop discipline and perseverance to be the main drivers of your activity, you’re gonna have some bad days. Knowing that you can continue the work you started even when you’re out of motivation makes you feel free and in control. Which is why I like to wake up before the alarms go off.
Matt Medeiros
Founder of PluginTut | Social: LinkedIn | Twitter
Which is the first thing you do in the morning?
Coffee first. I have an 8-month-old son, so the mornings are filled with getting him ready, having breakfast with him, and all of that fun stuff. I’ll then try to sneak in a workout, either in my house or out for a run. For business, I usually check my YouTube channel and Twitter accounts for questions that came in overnight, then I’ll hop into checking e-mails. Wunderlist, my to-do app, is next on the list.
Talk in one-two phrases about your daily routine
“Living in the happy chaos” I know I can’t control everything, especially with clients, so I need to embrace the chaos that can happen. I also create a lot of content, which I have outlined ahead of time, but there are days where I simply don’t feel like writing a blog post or recording a video, so I change things up to do what inspires me.
Coffee vs. Tea
Coffeeeeee!
Which is a special thing that keeps you motivated on your work & business
The pursuit of success; doing it my way. Imagine what success looks like for you and *really* shoot for it, not getting caught up in how someone else built their own success. Do what makes you happy, and do it your way.
Alexandra Draghici
Product owner at Captain Form | Social: Twitter | LinkedIn
Which is the first thing you do in the morning?
Listen to the radio, have a coffee and read my email to see if the overnight messages have an impact on the current day’s priorities. Then I head off to the office and crack some jokes with my colleagues to set a positive mood for the day.
Talk in one-two phrases about your daily routine
Firstly, I talk with my team about the objectives that we have for the day and about how we are going to reach them. Then, most of my day consists of meetings, data analysis, validation and prioritization of new opportunities, problem-solving and team management. Every once in a while, I do some actual work, so that people don’t get suspicious. 😉
Coffee vs. Tea
Not a big fan of either, except for the must-have morning coffee.
A special thing that keeps you motivated on your work & business
Putting myself in the user’s shoes. Just like we have our objectives, users have their own. And we can help them reach their objectives by building a feature, optimizing their experience or troubleshooting a specific case. So what keeps me motivated is the fact that we can make other people’s day better.
Adi Spiac
Co-founder at Cozmoslabs | Social: LinkedIn
Which is the first thing you do in the morning?
Practicing gratitude. I find it to be one of the best remedies for reducing anxiety and starting your day well.
If this fails, observing my 11 months daughter’s odd sleeping positions will do it.
On Fridays (since it’s a non-working day at Cozmoslabs), I normally get up early and read, exercise or go fishing. Sometimes I spend the whole day with my daughter until my wife wraps up her work day. Then we all go for a walk.
Talk in one-two phrases about your daily routine
I always try to separate the “building/creating” from the “managing” work related tasks and split my work day in two, by setting a specific chunk of time to handle each category.
The first part of the day is dedicated to “building” stuff. Whether this means writing, coding, learning something new, researching, optimizing processes etc., it puts me in the “builder’s mindset”. Also, it’s usually just ONE thing I’m working on.
I try to eliminate distractions completely in the first part of the day, so I can get around 2-3 hours of solitary and focused work before midday.
After lunch I switch to a “managing” mode, where I read & reply to emails, answer questions and offer support to my colleagues, take phone calls, schedule things, attend meetings.
This setup allows me to reduce multitasking and focus on both types of tasks without going bananas.
Coffee vs. Tea
Tea, always. Love the smell of coffee, though.
Which is a special thing that keeps you motivated on your work & business
Building things and constantly learning something new. Did I mention I enjoy challenges?
Business wise, a huge motivation boost is being surrounded by highly responsible and all-around amazing colleagues (thank you team).
Brad Touesnard
Founder at Delicious Brains Inc. | Social: LinkedIn | Twitter
Which is the first thing you do in the morning?
The first thing I do is go to the kitchen and drink a tall glass of water. I feel better within five minutes.
Talk in one-two phrases about your daily routine
I get up around 6:30 AM. I help my wife get the kids ready for school/daycare. I sit down at my laptop around 8 AM, work until noon, do some kind of fitness (i.e. yoga, running, or hockey), then eat lunch and watch Last Week Tonight or The Daily Show. I start cooking dinner for wife and kids around 4:30 PM. I’ll sometimes pop back on in the evening for an hour to finish up some odds and ends.
Coffee vs. Tea
Actually, I gave up caffeine last year and it has had a hugely positive impact on my health.
Which is a special thing that keeps you motivated on your work & business
To stay motivated I try to make sure that I’m always learning something new and challenging myself. Otherwise, I get bored.
Corey Maass
Founder at KanbanWP Social: LinkedIn
Which is the first thing you do in the morning?
Clean the kitchen (not a deep clean, just do the dishes, straighten up). It’s a huge win, right away.
Talk in one-two phrases about your daily routine
Great music that I care about, curated by other people. I drink at least 50 oz of water every day from a single, large bottle. That way I only have to fill it up once (lower barrier of entry).
Coffee vs. Tea
Tea
Tara Claeys
Founder of Design TLC | Social LinkedIn
Which is the first thing you do in the morning?
Go running, biking or to the gym. 5:30 or 6 am
Talk in one-two phrases about your daily routine
Exercise – also this is a social outlet as I’m in a running group. Come home, have breakfast/coffee, read the paper. Sometimes I jump into a small work project before showering. Depends on how sweaty I am. Walk my dog and get to work for the next 5-7 hours without much break. Sometimes (often) I get back on the computer and do more work after dinner. This is pathetic, isn’t it?!
Coffee vs. Tea
Coffee
Matthew Pritchett
Founder of Pritchett Media | Social: Twitter | Facebook
Which is the first thing you do in the morning?
I journal. I keep several notebooks by my bed that allows me to jot down ideas, solutions to problems, or anything that sleep has helped my brain process and organize. I also take a few moments to review my to-do list which I created before stepping away from my desk the day before so I have a solid understanding of what needs to be accomplished that day. I’ve been trying a new habit in my journey of writing what I’m thankful for and reviewing my goals for personal, business, and developer skill set each day, week, month, and year.
Talk in one-two phrases about your daily routine
Journal Writing. Quick walk (15 min). Shower. Read, journal writing again, and review my personal projects is that keeps me motivated and refreshed, creatively and emotionally. I do these first thing in the morning which not only gives my personal projects extra energy but gives me the passion for the rest of my day. Client work comes next and usually take up most of the day.
Then I eat and spend time with family. Tucking my girls in most nights is a huge plus followed by the time when I watch movies, spend time with my wife and enjoy the tranquility on our back porch, with a view of the sunset and mountains.
Routine is very important to my sanity as well as my ability to remove stress from my life. But the ability to be fluid in changing circumstances is what keeps that routine from becoming a set of rules or a mental grind.
Coffee vs. Tea
Coffee
Conclusions
Our daily routines can make a huge difference to how happy or productive we are and personally I tried building the “perfect” one by hoping I will get more things done and wasting less time procrastinating.
After reading several books and doing research for this article I realized there is no perfect morning or daily routine. Though, now I have a better understanding of how our brain works and what type of activities suit my health and emotional state, I don’t try to build the perfect day anymore.
Each day can be different and I try to find the things that drive my motivation and productivity in that moment, which means try to stick to the tasks from my to-do list and embrace other small events from that day as they come and depending on how emergent they are.
I hope all these tips and tricks will keep you motivated and mentally fit, with simple but a powerfully effective morning routine. If you have other tactics to attack your day for massive success, I’m eager to hear them bellow in the comments section.
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