It’s taken a lot of trial and error to find the right structure to my mornings, but I think I’ve finally found the right one. Last night I sat down and worked out a morning routine, it looks like this.

Wake Up at around 6AM. I like to rise early as the two times I work best are late at night, and early in the morning.

Breakfast is the first thing I get after I wake. While I’m eating breakfast, I open Mail and start going through each email, clicking on one at a time and replying or taking action on action, then I archive the message. Once this process is finished, I am left with a perfectly clear email inbox.

Blogging is the next step I take. I like to do this before I pop open my RSS feeds, forums, or daily visited websites. The usual routine is to write a post, edit the post, and then publish it.

The next step comes the RSS Reader. I open up NewsFire and are presented with around 300 new items from the previous 12 hours. I immediately go into my blog comments feed, and reply to any new comments. Next I move onto Flickr comments, and reply to those.

Once the comments are read and replied to, I can sit back and read my feeds from bottom to top (least favorite sites are listed at the bottom, most favorite at the top). While reading posts, I jot down notes of ideas, create PDFs of articles I want to keep and store. Once all the feed are read and the inbox count at zero, I quit NewsFire and file created PDFs.

What does a typical morning look like for you?