What do you wake up to?
What’s the first thing you do when you wake up? You have a few choices: Attend to your biology, get something to eat, shower, stretch. Many of us are reaching for our laptops or cell phones before we even get out of bed.
The New York Times article yesterday notes that network usage is spiking much earlier than even a few years ago: “Arbor Networks, a Boston company that analyzes Internet use, says that Web traffic in the United States gradually declines from midnight to around 6 a.m. on the East Coast and then gets a huge morning caffeine jolt. ‘It’s a rocket ship that takes off at 7 a.m.,’ said Craig Labovitz, Arbor’s chief scientist.”
Last year, I would listen to NPR for a few minutes. Today, the clock radio is unplugged in favor of a cell phone charger. On more than one occasion, I have been awakened by the buzz of the first AP story alert of the day, or the first email from an early-rising colleague.
The first experiences of our day are critical to how productive we are during the day. Julie Morgenstern, the author of Never Check Your Email in the Morning, says no email for the first hour. In her opinion, email puts you into reactive mode to start the day, and you never catch up (video here).
Our morning routines will continue to evolve as technology integrates information into our lives. Is the fact that many of us reach for information before we reach for the cereal good news, bad news, or no news?
email first. Then Kids. Then email again
On premise, I’m with Julie. The first hour(s) of the day are golden. Email sets the pace for a course of distractions. Emails almost always take longer to compose than expected. So what seems like it will just take a minute, takes 5, and, for me, initiates a vicious circle of e-distraction.