The common advice for increased productivity is to do your hardest work in the morning. There’s the least amount of distractions and it gives you a sense of elation to know you tackled something right off the bat.

I want to challenge that advice.

Yes, at the end of the day you’re usually exhausted and have a million things to think about, the primary one being the bed you’re going to sleep on shortly. There’s also the sense of joy at being able to tune out after the day’s work is done, thereby occupying your mind further with that anticipation.

However, the morning is the only time when you have nothing to occupy your mind. Unless you like to sleep until the last possible minute and make a mad scramble to start your day (this is easily remedied by getting to bed earlier in case you were wondering), there is a moment in your day when everything is quiet.

That moment is first thing in the morning as the world begins to wake up.

Instead of filling it with tasks to do, it might be worthwhile for your sanity to just enjoy the quiet. 

At first, this will be difficult because we’ve been conditioned to think doing nothing is unproductive and it’s a surefire path to being a lazy specimen of a human. Once you get over that feeling, it will be replaced by something peaceful.

You can move forward in the full knowledge you had a time of quiet, calm and peace in your day. 

It doesn’t require any fancy postures, positions, furniture, journals or methodology – just a willingness to say, “this is nice.”

With your head in the right frame of mind, tackling the rest of the day will seem like a pleasure.