I could have called this the ‘first things first’ idea for productivity and improved mental health but, hey, we talk God stuff here and he thought of it first so it seemed only fair to give credit where it’s due.

Do you remember way, way back in Genesis when God was listing out all the rules and regulations for how things should be done? Usually I gloss over that stuff because lots of it isn’t relevant today so much.

But there’s a piece in there about bringing God the firstborn animal from the flock. The first part of the harvest and first born children were also mentioned (not that, as the eldest child, I’m biased of course!)

It was this idea of giving God the first part that I’ve been pondering on.

Do you do that thing where you say hello to him first thing? In the shower is my favourite place. It’s the one time in the day when I’m usually left alone.

And those days are usually good days. Even if things go to pot later on, that little bit of quiet has this seemingly magic ability to improve my sanity levels!

But I started to think about how we could use this same idea in business.

You might have heard the advice to pick one or two important tasks and focus on those?

And it’s great advice but how many days do you have where you literally only have one or two things to do? There always seems to be the extra little bits and bobs that, while I wouldn’t want to pick them as the ‘one or two tasks’ thing, still must be done.

How about you?

What if we picked literally the one, single most important ‘thing’ for the day, and always did that first?

For me, that would be this blog post. You might roll your eyes when I say this but I genuinely love writing these. (Roll your eyes because everyone says it but really, I love it.)

So the very first thing I do after dropping the kids off at school and making coffee is power up the mac, plug in the microphone (for the audio version) and bam! I’m away.

What would your today look like if you always did the single most important thing first?

And there can be firsts in categories of course.

Because another of my firsts is saying good morning to each of my children. A kiss on the head for Michael. A hug for Caitlin. And a subtle touch on the arm and conversation about her guinea pigs with my 10-going-on-15 year old Emily, for whom massive outward shows of affection are becoming less cool.

Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to spend the next 7 days experimenting with this idea of firsts.

Pick one (or more if you need to play with categories like I did) and do it first, every day. For just 7 days.

And then let’s report back and see how it went.

You game?

Until next time, keep smiling. 🙂