Best First: The Single Strategy that Guarantees
You Do What You Planned to Do

The 5 AM Miracle Podcast, hosted by Jeff Sanders

Episode #567: Best First: The Single Strategy that Guarantees You Do What You Planned to Do

Jeff Sanders
What is the best habit to begin your day with?

What is the best and healthiest food in your diet?

What is the best work project for you to complete before all the others?

Knowing the best means having the ability to reprioritize your life so that what matters most gets your attention before what matters least.

This is the 5am Miracle, episode number 567.

Breakfast first, the single strategy that guarantees you do what you plan to do.

Good morning and welcome to the 5am Miracle.

I am Jeff Sanders and this is the podcast dedicated to dominating your day before breakfast.

My goal is to help you bounce out of bed with enthusiasm, create powerful, lifelong habits, and tackle your grandest goals with extraordinary energy.

I am a keynote speaker and corporate trainer specializing in delivering high-energy, interactive, and action-oriented presentations and workshops focused on productivity, wellness, and personal and professional growth.

If you want to learn more, head over to jeffsanders.com/speaking.

In the episode this week, I'll break down why the order of events is the difference maker when it comes to doing what matters.

Why we tend to procrastinate on the few things we know are the best use of our time.

And how to leverage the best first strategy to guarantee your future success.

Let's get to it.

If you have ever wondered how you could ever get it all done, you have probably stumbled upon the reality that it never all will.

The goal of productivity is not to do it all.

It's to be effective and to accomplish what matters, but not to do everything.

With only 24 hours in a day and an endless to-do list that could take a hundred lifetimes, how could we ever squeeze it all in?

Simple.

We can't and we shouldn't try.

What we should do is strategize and prioritize.

The answer to everything complicated is always simple.

And the simple answer to productivity challenges is always best first.

This has been a strategy at the core of the 5am miracle since day one.

Let's just back up real quick and review what the 5am miracle actually is.

The miracle is not waking up early.

The miracle is doing something intentional with the first part of your day.

Now from my perspective, the first part of your day would be better if it was earlier in the day, so 5am would be a great time.

But really, the point behind everything I'm doing here is intentionality.

And to intentionally wake up early and then to intentionally choose your first and best activity right away.

A thing you have procrastinated on, a thing you have ignored, a thing you want to dedicate guaranteed time to.

That's the miracle.

You did something with your day first.

And because of that, the rest of your day is epically better.

There are so many of us, myself included, who wonder why wasn't yesterday better than it could have been?

Why do I feel stressed about it?

Why does it feel like I was busy but didn't get a lot done?

These very common productivity challenges, life stressors, this sense of overwhelm that kicks in because we didn't do the thing we wanted to do, or we did it and somehow it doesn't emotionally resonate with us, it didn't click.

Well, what's missing?

In most cases, it's a reprioritization that's necessary.

In most cases, it's not that we're doing the wrong things, but most likely in the wrong order.

And if we can switch these things around, have the puzzle pieces of our lives, our calendar with all these different components, just shift it a little bit, and we do things in the right order, we will get radically different and better results.

The best first strategy is the 5am miracle.

It is the core of living your best life.

Because when you choose to do the most important things first, you give yourself that chance to say, "Today is going to matter immediately.

Today is going to mean something because the first choice that I made was a great choice.

And every other choice after that will probably be better, more intentional, more proactive, more productive, more effective."

All the mores.

They show up because you did the thing you said you would do, which is the biggest challenge for most people is that, "Oh, I had these plans.

I had these goals.

I had this whole list mapped out."

And somehow it just didn't work.

So let's break down more of what the best first strategy actually is and how to make this work for you.

Let's start with the big concept of why the order of events is the difference maker when it comes to doing what matters.

The first and most important component you've heard of this podcast since day one is energy.

Lots and lots of energy.

Our best energy is usually, for most people, earlier in the day when there are fewer distractions.

There are plenty of night owls who argue against my point here, and that's fine.

You need to know yourself.

The goal here is to tap into your best energy cycles and be able to optimize those.

So I know for me, 7 a.m. to noon on most days is my best optimal time.

They're my golden hours.

That's when the most important work needs to be scheduled and tackled because that's when I'm most awake, most alert, yes, most caffeinated, most hydrated, and most ready and willing to do hard things.

I don't do hard things at 7 p.m.

I don't.

I intentionally do not do that because it will never happen, first of all.

And second of all, when I have tried to do hard things at that time, I don't have the brain power to do it well.

The quality is bad.

The quantity is not there.

It doesn't work.

Energy is the foundational driver of our ability to do things.

It's the thing that says because I am well off physically, mentally, emotionally, I can give my best self to my work.

You can do more and produce better quality with more energy and of course more focus.

So if your goal is to get more done, if it's to reprioritize your life and do the best things first, the best first step is quality sleep, exercise, hydration, get your energy ready so when it's time to execute, you personally, physically, emotionally, mentally are ready.

Number two, numbers three through 10 is worse than one and two.

Let me break this one down.

So imagine you have a top 10 list of tasks for today and you have numbered these one through 10 in order of importance.

So number one is most important.

Number 10 is least and everything in between is prioritized in order.

It is so common and this is one of my personal biggest flaws is to prioritize numbers three through 10 and wait on one and two, meaning I do the least important things first and I procrastinate and delay the most important.

If you read the book, The One Thing by Gary Keller and Jay Papazian, you know that that book really promotes this amazing, simple, beautiful strategy of doing the one thing, which is the one thing such that by doing it, everything else is easier or unnecessary altogether.

With that in mind, if you do numbers three through 10 and you wait on one and two, you've basically said, "I'm going to intentionally do the things that are probably easier, probably faster, probably make me feel better.

They're probably allowing me to get some sense of productivity and effectiveness even though I know intuitively at the core of who I am, I skipped the most important steps."

What's going to happen here is that you're going to train yourself to avoid what matters most.

You're going to train your brain to say, "I'm going to run away and let fear win the game."

It doesn't add up.

Doing three through 10 every single day will only ever get you to mediocrity.

It will never get you to greatness because greatness comes from doing the things that matter most.

It seems so obvious on paper, but are you doing it?

Are you living that life where you are giving yourself over to saying yes to what needs to get done?

Not what you want to get done.

Now, it sounds easiest or fastest, but what actually needs your attention most and first.

When you update your calendar and move those puzzle pieces of your life around and you begin with the most important, even if the rest is very appealing, you are training yourself to do hard things first.

You are building discipline and effectiveness at the highest levels.

And that means in the future, when new and more difficult challenges show up and they fail, you are ready.

You're like a soldier training yourself for war.

And that's a weird analogy if you're not a soldier, but it makes complete sense when you imagine the fact that life is hard.

There are so many difficult days, so many difficult challenges, and we need the skill set to be able to tackle those difficult days and difficult tasks and projects and people.

We need those skills and you're never going to have those skills if you avoid them on purpose.

You always take the easier road first.

You are training yourself to do the wrong thing and we need to flip that script.

And the funny thing is, is that if you do numbers one and two first, you may not have time for three through 10.

You literally might only be able to get to a couple of things and then you're going to feel weird.

And the weirdness is going to come from the fact that you were technically on paper less productive, meaning you accomplished fewer tasks.

But the goal here is not quantity.

The goal is quality.

The goal is effectiveness.

If you did only one thing today and that one thing you did is the most important, the rest can wait.

It's fine.

And we know it's fine because over time, if you continually do the hardest and most important things first, what you end up realizing is a lot of the things down the list never had to happen.

Literally, they are now unnecessary or never were to begin with.

And so if you devote your life to doing things that sound appealing and fun and quick and easy, then your life is defined by those things.

But if you flip it and you do what matters most first and you realize later numbers three through 10 could have been skipped altogether, well, your life results are going to be wildly different and the goal here is a better life.

The bigger results, the bigger accomplishments, the better ones.

Now this is all subjective.

Numbering one through 10 is up to you.

You get to choose what these things look like, but I know that you know yourself, which means you know what you're avoiding.

You know the answer here and every single day it's your challenge to make your list and prioritize it in the way it makes the most sense to you and your calendar.

But always starting with number one and never anything else.

The third and final component here of why the order of events matters the most is that we are really terrible at predicting time and unforeseen circumstances.

So if you wait to start the most important task until later in the day, you will not have time for it.

Time creep is a real thing.

Projects take forever.

Meetings go over.

If we wind up waiting, things don't happen.

Not that they happen later on.

They literally don't happen at all.

The goal here is not to postpone your dreams indefinitely.

We have to almost arbitrarily force these things into existence.

We have to squeeze these things in in a way that at first seems artificial and incorrect.

It seems wrong, but it is the right way to do it because if you don't, it won't.

This is a very common strategy for exercise.

Probably the most common I see is that someone will say, I want to work out every single day this year and I have a workout scheduled after work at 4 p.m.

I'm going to drive to the gym and I'm going to do my workout.

Now, the funny thing is I actually do go to the gym every day after work and it works for me.

But for most people, most of the time, if the 4 p.m. workout, 5 p.m., 6 p.m. workout is the goal, you're not going to go most of the days.

You'll go on a few, but most of the time, life will get in the way.

Work will go long.

You'll have schedule changes.

You'll have your kids' schedule changes.

You'll have all kinds of things that will show up and that workout gets postponed.

It gets delayed.

It gets canceled altogether.

And then a year goes by and you ask yourself, well, how many workouts did I do after work?

And the answer was almost zero.

Very, very few.

On the flip side, you take someone else who says, I'm also going to work out every single day this year, but it's going to be at 5.30 in the morning.

It's a painfully early time for most people.

But those people who commit to the early morning workout are significantly more likely to actually do it.

They're the ones getting the results.

They're the ones actually doing it because no one's going to stop them at 5 o'clock in the morning.

No one's awake to tell them no.

No one's awake to reschedule their lives.

It's just them doing their thing.

So if you can't predict time well, if you don't know how to predict your life's crazy tangents and circumstances that are never in your control, well, then you need to build a life where you have more control.

You can predict things more accurately.

And the only way to really guarantee that for most people, most of the time is your first activity in the day.

Your 5 a.m. miracle is your time.

It's your precious time.

It's your miracle hour that no one's going to stop you from doing stuff.

So if you're bad at prediction, if your life is a hot mess, mine is all the time.

I know this.

I live this.

Then schedule what matters first.

And you can avoid the regret and the unforeseen, unfortunate circumstances of missing your goal yet again.

So those are a few reasons why the order of events is the difference maker when it comes to doing what matters.

Once again, your energy, doing number one first, and being terrible at time prediction to guarantee number one needs to be early in the day.

Now let's shift to why we tend to procrastinate on the few things we know are the best use of our time.

Procrastination is a common thing.

Everybody does it.

The question is, are you doing it intelligently?

Does it work for you or against you?

And if you really tap into what you are procrastinating on, what you are intentionally or unintentionally delaying in your life, you'll realize that procrastination plays a very powerful role and we want to be able to reign that in and really understand its value and its place in our life and then be able to shift its usage so that it works for us instead of against us.

The first component here with procrastination is fear.

Fear wins way too often.

We delay what we're scared to face.

We procrastinate when we don't want to face the truth.

We put off what we just don't want to deal with.

And the only answer here is to deal with it.

To do it.

To not delay.

This is why the 5-Hit Miracle exists.

It is designed at its core to tackle fear.

It's to tackle yes, procrastination for logistical reasons, of course, but also the emotional reasons.

Those things that we know deep inside we have been holding ourselves back from saying yes to the big stuff.

Well, let's stop doing that.

Let's not let fear win yet again.

Let's not let procrastination take over in the emotional sense of stopping us from doing the thing we set out to do.

Once again, we delay what we're scared to face.

We procrastinate when we don't want to face the truth of our lives.

And we put off what we just don't want to deal with.

These are truths.

This is how we live and operate.

And the only question is, what will you do about it?

And the best answer is a proactive approach, an intentional approach to your mornings.

To wake up early and do the thing that matters to deal with the fear.

That's the thing.

That's where all of this comes from, where all of it ends up, is directly tackling the thing we don't want to do.

Number two, we assume that whatever it is we're trying to tackle will just take a long time.

So we never take the time to break down the large task into many tiny steps.

This is a lesson I learned very clearly when I wrote my first book.

This was way back right after college.

I had set out to write a book for myself and I just knew, even if the book never saw the light of day, I wanted this to be a bucket list item for me to write a full book.

And when I set out to do it, there was one very clear, we'll call it hurdle, in my mind.

And the hurdle was, okay, I need to write a book.

Well, a book could be hundreds of pages, lots and lots of research, lots of writing.

And the mentality that I had around this was, I can't just sit down and write a book.

It's too big.

The goal is monumentally scary because of how large it could possibly be.

And so for a long time, I just didn't.

And I thought that one way to skirt around the issue was, well, I'll be a blogger for a while.

I'll write a few articles here or there.

I'll kind of let myself be in the writer's world, but I'll let the book idea just kind of hold itself for a while.

And then I realized down the road that my blog articles would actually be really great in my book.

And that's what it dawned on me.

I've been writing the book the whole time.

My blog articles were actually phenomenal content for the book.

And then it hit me.

These articles were short.

They were small.

They were bite-sized.

They were easy to tackle.

I had no fear to write a small article, a few paragraphs, no big deal.

But a whole book, well, that was a whole other story.

And so the answer to writing a book was not to write a book.

It was to write a paragraph, to do a small article, to do something tangible each and every day that over time would add up to a book.

But never at any point in this process did I write a book.

Never.

I wrote small, tiny pieces.

That was it.

At any given moment in time, that was all that I did.

This is what it means to predict our lives and our future and our big goals is to not make these grandiose assumptions that we're going to do big things.

It's to realize that on any given day, we're only doing tiny things.

And so if you procrastinate on a really big goal, all that you've actually done is held off on doing a tiny first step.

And once you realize that, you realize, wait a minute, that seems kind of silly.

I could just do the small step.

I could make that leap forward by doing a single action and then doing another and another and another.

And those things over time will add up to these big goals we want.

So to procrastinate on a big goal does seem a bit silly when we know we have small moments of time.

We have the availability to move our calendars around to guarantee some time each and every day to make some progress.

And that some progress will compound over time into something tangible.

Into something monumental.

But it has to start with the baby steps and continue with those because that's all this is.

So to procrastinate on a big goal, once again, that's not the path forward.

And the third and final reason why we tend to procrastinate is that we fill our time with lots of things that feel important with really no sense of what matters most.

There's a big conversation to be had around emotion versus logic, around doing what we feel is best versus what our brain tells us is logically best.

We as humans are emotional creatures and we use logic to justify our emotional decisions.

And so if you filled your entire day with things that felt good, that were emotionally satisfying, that's great.

You'll feel good about the day.

But logically, you didn't do the right stuff.

And this is very clear.

Now, there is overlap here.

There is a lot of subjectivity here.

But the general answer is that we want to do is to prioritize based on both of these factors combined together.

To realize that logic and emotion both play a role.

And the goal is not to let one win over the other.

It's let them both play in tandem to make an intentional, emotional, soul filled, logical, intelligent answer.

Yes, all of those things, all those factors included.

So that top 10 list for the day is very personal to you because it's based on the logic, the obligations, responsibilities, those aspects of yes, of course, but also the emotional component of what you're actually driven to do, what you're dying to do.

Both of these things play at once and that's what creates and crafts together your day.

And it's going to look different on most days.

It's going to feel different on most days.

But the intention here is to have a really confident answer of I have decided intentionally, intelligently, logically, and emotionally, this is the best next step.

And then to say yes to it and to give your entire self over to it.

It's to give your whole self to whatever it is that you're doing.

And whole self means logic and emotion because that's what we bring to the table.

Yes, we are emotionally driven as our primary factor here, but we are all of these things.

And when you bring your whole self to something, that's when the best results show up.

And so our goal with procrastination is to acknowledge it does exist, but to use it to our advantage.

There is also an entire strategy of discussing this podcast before about intentionally procrastinating to delay things to the last minute on purpose.

That's not for today's conversation, but that's part of this as well.

It's to acknowledge there are some things to wait on, and that's fine and good and actually best for those tasks.

But everything else, the things we're delaying, the things we know need our attention, it's those things that have to come to the top of our list, the first part of our deck, to our 5 a.m. miracle.

So now let's wrap things up with a conversation on how to leverage the best first strategy to guarantee your future success.

The first idea here is to make a list of everything that matters in each major area of life.

Now, if you've read any kind of career planning books or life organization books, they'll map out lives in 9, 10, 12 different areas, and honestly, it gets kind of overwhelming.

Yes, there's the spiritual, financial, emotional, career, family, personal.

You could make a lot of different lists that are very long and honestly, to me, very overwhelming.

What I like to do is break down my life into just a couple of big areas that are the most important in this season of my life.

You can take those big tests to analyze your life in 9, 10, 12 areas at once just to get a sense of where to focus next, and that's fine.

But in any given season of your life, we're not going to do all of them.

It's just too many goals.

The better answer is to pick 2 or 3, let's say, and that becomes the primary focus for your next season.

You could even do just one area of your life, like health or wealth or family, whatever the case is.

But the best way to begin this process is to have a really clear sense of which areas of your life need the most attention.

And then that becomes the starting point to figure out how to dictate your calendar, your task list, your priorities.

They need to focus in a big picture sense of a category.

Simple example here, let's imagine that your personal health is the main focus of this season.

Well, then your calendar and task list will need to be oriented in that direction with the best first strategy in mind.

And that means when your day begins, your first and best strategy, your 5-day a miracle habit is a health-oriented habit.

It's a workout.

It's going to read a book on exercise.

It's a nutritional plan.

Whatever it is, it is geared towards your health first.

The second goal is then to take that major area of focus for the next season, and this example will use health once again, and then break that down into a few key habits you want to make sure are the bedrock of your next season and prioritize that list as well.

So I said before many times here that our goal is to have a 5-day a miracle to wake up early and do your best habit first.

Well, which habit should you choose?

There are a lot to choose from in any area of life.

Health is definitely a good example of that where there are literally hundreds of healthy habits you could choose.

And so your goal, once you've decided on the seasonal focus, is to then figure out which key habits should be happening for you every single day.

And ideally, it'd be a couple.

Not a lot, once again.

The goal is not to overwhelm yourself.

But if you have, let's say, two or three that you want to do each day, you could pick one of those for your 5-day a miracle, maybe one for later on in the mid-morning, and then a third one to wrap up the day at the end.

Keep this simple, but we're not trying to be overwhelmed with our goals.

The important thing here is to understand what matters and for your life to be oriented around those few key habits, with the most important being scheduled first, the second second, and the third third.

The order of events matters.

And this prioritized list will dictate your behavior each and every day.

And of course, you can always flex this list.

You can swap out habits.

You can get really creative.

You can find new ways to incorporate more over time.

But the beginning is always simple and always clearly prioritized.

And that's what shifts us into the final component, which is to schedule our day with number one being first, and we do not move on to any other components until number one is done.

This is a discipline that I think is the difference maker for most people.

Of all the things I've said today, as far as organizing your time and having number one be first, the difference in saying, I will do this versus I've planned to do this is the dividing line, right?

Execution is the thing.

We can plan all day.

We can make fancy calendars, theorize on lists, lists upon lists upon lists.

But what you did past tense in hindsight is the only real indicator of your actual actions, your technical behavior, your habits define your life.

But habits is a past tense thing.

What you did in the past has led you up to today, which means the only real conversation here is what are you going to execute on?

What will get done?

Once we know this and we can say, well, number one is a 5 a.m. miracle with a morning jog.

Awesome.

If that jog gets done, the rest of your day can continue.

If it doesn't stop everything and go for a fricking run, go do the thing, then move on with your day.

The discipline to say my life will not move forward.

I am committed to this thing.

It will happen first.

End of story.

That commitment will change your life.

That line in the sand that says this will happen.

This is who I am.

It will change everything because then all of a sudden it becomes past tense.

I did the thing.

It did happen.

And now because of that, I have this amazing ability to move forward even more intelligently with more success under my belt.

We're trying to shift from the kinds of people who plan to do things to the kinds of people who did things.

And that is so huge.

The execution piece is the thing.

That's our goal.

That's what we're trying to shoot for.

And so when you build your calendars out, when you plan which season of life to focus on, really keep this in mind.

Really tap into who you are, who you tend to be because you know yourself.

You know the goals you set and you never do versus the goals you set and you always do.

There's a huge difference in those.

They look similar on paper.

But your actual execution of those plans defines the result.

That's where all of this comes down to.

The line of sand is the thing you did or did not do.

So build your list with as much intelligence of yourself as possible, as much self-awareness as you can.

And when you do, your results are going to speak for themselves.

You're going to be a rock star.

It's all going to work out great.

But it does hinge on the execution piece because otherwise it's all just theory.

It's all just fancy ideas and fun podcasts and a good time, but it's not actually going to benefit you much.

My goal here is to get you the results.

And the best first strategy is the strategy for your life and your work that is the 5a miracle and is the thing that will lead you to the successful life you're striving for.

I guarantee it.

And for the action step this week, define what the best thing is for you to do first in a few key areas of life and work.

What is the best food to start off your meal with?

What is the best project to prioritize before all others?

What is the best habit to do when you first wake up each morning at 5am?

Define your best and get to it first.

You can guarantee success if the order of events matches the outcome you desire.

Of course, subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app or become a VIP member of the 5am miracle community by getting the premium ad-free version with exclusive bonus episodes at 5ammiraclepremium.com.

That's all I've got for you here on the 5am miracle podcast this week.

Until next time, you have the power to change your life and all that fun begins bright and early.

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