We wake the kids up about ten or fifteen minutes before they need to be awake. And what that does is it creates two things. First of all, connection, because when we wake them up, we walk into the room gently and softly and sit with them and give them a hug and talk to them about the dream that we've wokened them from or what they're looking forward to in the day. We just have two or three minutes with each of them. It doesn't take long, but they wake up feeling connection.
Hosting How I Work has taught me so much about working more effectively, but it's also helped me as a parent. It turns out that a lot of what makes people super successful in the workplace can also make live smoother at home. This parallel became especially clear when I spoke to parenting expert Justin Coolson, who suggested a technique for getting through those hectic school mornings with a little less fuss, and his advice was almost identical to what Laura May
Martin tells her coaching clients in Google's executive Suite. My name is doctor Amantha Imber. I'm an organizational psychologist and the founder of Behavioral Science Consultancy invent him and this is how I work a show about how to help you do your best work. Welcome to your Favorite Tips across ten bite size episodes. I'll be sharing tips from some of the world's best thinkers that you, the listeners,
have found the most useful. We're covering everything from creating better to do lists to setting more effective boundaries around your time, and you'll be hearing from people like best selling author Sally Hepworth, Corona Cast host and journalist Norman Swan, and Google's executive productivity advisor Laura May Martin. Today's favorite tip comes from Tracy and she writes, my favorite tip was with doctor Justin Coulson Making Morning's Magic and his
four morning rules to keep the flow. So here is parenting expert and host of the Happy Families podcast talking about his strategy to make mornings magic when you are a parent, and especially a working one.
The short answer, though, is we've got a couple of things that we do. One of the things is what we call our Making Morning's Magic system, and that's comprised of four elements. Element number one, the morning begins the night before, so that means that we get the kids lunchboxes organized, or at least have them out and ready for the next day. They've got their uniforms, is it library days? At sports day? Do we know where their
shoes are? Has a rogue sock been left under the seat in the car as their swimming gear ready.
For the next day?
All that sort of stuff. Morning begins the night before. We have found that that is one of the most incredibly useful things to make sure that we have smooth mornings. We even sort of pull out the stuff for breakfast and stick it on the kitchen bench so it's ready. That's the first thing. The second part of the four part process is that we wake the kids up about tan or fifteen minutes before they need to be awake.
And what that does is it creates two things. First of all, connection because when we wake them up, we walk into the room gently and softly and sit with them and give them a hug and talk to them about the dream that we've wokened them from or what they're looking forward to in the day. We just have two or three minutes with each of them. It doesn't take long, but they wake up feeling connection before we move it to the next room. And then a Mantha
the critical thing. It also creates margin because no one's rushing because we've got an extra tunnel fifteen minutes because everyone's getting up a little bit early. The third thing that we do is we actually have kind of like
a breakfast and lunch system. The kids put in their breakfast order and their lunch order by you know, when you go to a motel, usually a cheap motel on the side of a highway, you can do a quick tick and flick for room service breakfast the next day, and you order those two pieces of thin white bread with a couple of fried eggs that usually arrive cold and a little bit too hard. Not running it off,
but you've got that tick inflict process. So we actually us we don't do it anymore because the kids have got the system nailed. But to start it off, we would get the kids to fill in their menu for breakfast and lunch the night before, which means that when they walk out into the kitchen, the list of what they need to do is already there. What they're going to eat, what they're going to prepare, how it's going to work. And I can't tell you how amazing that is.
To remove the decision making process from a tired, sleepy child's mind. They just have to look at the piece of paper and make that. And we've spent the time to teach them to make it, which means that step number four is that we don't tell them what to do what we do instead, as we say, hey, how are you going with the five things that need to be done this morning? What's next? How can I help? That is so good.
I'm taking copious notes as you're talking, justin I'm loving this.
We found that it's made an enormous difference, and in fact, it was so popular that the New York Times picked up an article that I wrote and they published it. So if people want more, you could probably just link to the Making Morning's Magic New York Times piece that I wrote, and it outlines precisely what those steps are and also how it taps in with basic psychological needs that kids have. And this is why it works because
it fulfills the need for connection. They're getting lots of that when we wake them up nice and early and spend time with them, but also as we say, hey, how are you going? What help do you need? Which is connection rather than where are your shoes? Why haven't you done this, hurry up, we're going to be late, which is correction and direction. So it meets that need
for connection. It satisfies the need for autonomy because they're making lots of choices about what they're going to eat or what they're going to do to make the morning work. And it also satisfies a basic psychological need for what
research is called competence because they do it themselves. We spend the time teaching them how to make their breakfasts, how to scramble their eggs, how to pour milk onto their week bics, and how to get their lunch organized, which means that by the time they're about sort of eight or nine years old, they're doing it all on their own, which is just bliss for a parent who is busy and tired and probably stayed up till late the night before watching Netflix instead of remembering that their
morning began the night before as well.
I loved Justin's parenting advice, especially the tick and flick process for my daughter. I remember I tried this for a while and it worked like a dream. If you'd like to dive deeper into Justin's Making Morning's Magic system, follow the link in the show Notes to find his New York Times article. And if you want to find out how planning your day the night before can help you in the office, listen to the previous episode of this mini series with Laura May Martin as the listener
of How I Work. You've hopefully picked up a few tips on this show to help you work better, But do you want more? And maybe in a book form, because let's face it, books are the most awesome thing on the planet. Well, now you can. In my new book, time Wise, I uncover a wealth of proven strategies that anyone can use to improve their productivity, work, and lifestyle.
Time Wise brings together all of the gems that I've learned from conversations with the world's greatest thinkers, including Adam Grant, Dan Pink, Mia Friedman, and Turia Pitt and many many others. Time Wise is launching on July five, but you can preorder it now from Amantha dot com. And if you pre order time Wise, I have a couple of bonuses. View First, you'll receive an ebook that details my top twenty favorite absence software for being time Wise with email, calendar, passwords, reading,
cooking ideas and more. You will also get a complementary spot in a webinar that I'm running on June twenty nine, where I will be sharing the tactics from time Wise that I use most often, and also some bonus ones that are not in the book that I use and love. Hop onto a man dot com to pre order now.
How I Work is produced by Inventium with production support from Dead Set Studios, and thank you to Matt Nimma who does the audio mix for every episode and makes everything sound so much better than it would have otherwise. See you next time.