I'm going to tell you something you already know about making your mornings flow smoother. Ready?
To have an easy start to your day, create a system where you set up needed things the night before. This is the short, polite version of "Prior planning prevents piss-poor performance."
Even in this economy, people's lives have a way of establishing equilibrium. We're hardy little survivors, we are, and life has a way of settling into a state of stability as we adjust to our new circumstances. And whether you're a free-lance artist, a stay-at-home-parent, a line worker, an executive or an executive assistant, you have a work day: a time of day where you labor.
That equilibrium posits that you have a relatively steady life. For the most part, you can safely expect things to run on a certain schedule. You can assess and prep for the situations you expect, you can prepare the things you need for those events, and you have a hold on what's going to happen in your regular workday and work week... that's why you have routines.
Routines grow around things we need to do on a regular basis, everything from how you wake up and feed yourself in the morning, to the way you set up your office and desk, to the things you attend to first as you balance your workload, all the way down to your
before-bed rituals.
You know what you're going to do?
Prepare the way for it to go smoothly.
You know what you want to happen?
Set it up so it will. You know what you need to do?
Stop over-analyzing it and do it.