I’m willing to bet you’ve experienced on one too many occasions the effects of not having enough time to prepare for work after that alarm clock sounds the digital battle cry. To err is to be human, but beyond the darkness of consistently being ruled by clock there exists a promising light of promptness. Attaining morning bliss is easy, with a little planning.

Personally a few years back before I rebooted my morning routine, the AM hours consisted of never eating breakfast and hopping up on what couldn’t have been healthy amounts of manufactured eye-opener aka caffeine. Red Bull coursing through my veins, I’d consistently forget lunches and other items that I’d want to have with me at the workplace. I’ve never been a ill-prepared individual, but I will say that my college/early work years could have been injected with a solid dose sticky notes. I’ve got that on “lockdown” now and hit every day stacked to the brim with everything I will or potentially need.

So, what did I do to go from forgetful fumbler to stocked stud? Well, the recipe lies across several methods of better morning-time management via the evening before. You see, I was always viewing the time before making my commute as my window to pack the briefcase and dash off, when in fact I was dead wrong. To become the optimized professional, there were four main points I had to hit that hardly take any time and can be done 12 hours before work.

Pack lunch - This is perhaps the biggest time saver I can recommend. You’ll love yourself for doing this the night before.

Lay out clothes - No more deciding on what to wear or furiously sifting through closets at the last minute.

Write reminders - Instead of gradually remembering “to-dos” through the day, jot them down while they are fresh.

Clean up room/house - The feeling of leaving a living environment messy will hamper sleep and wear on a person through the day.

By doing these things at night, instead of the morning, you’ll enjoy a care-free commute with plenty of hourglass to spare between waking up and pushing through the office doors.

photo by: Flickr user amnesiak1978

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This is a guest posting by Lise of Frugal in the Fruitlands. Her blog is a fantastic resource for plumping your wallet through inventive saving techniques. (subscribe to her feed here)

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s book Finding Flow suggests that we are happiest as humans when we pursue tasks that are challenging, but not so challenging that they discourage progress. This is a challenge when you consider that human beings also crave routine. Nothing is wrong with habit - but it can discourage the kind of supportive challenge that leads to flow experiences. In other words, if mental stimulation is lacking in your work or home life, it will be more difficult to bring new ideas to the table.

Nowhere is our craving for habit more apparent than in the morning, when we arrive–sometimes zombie-like!–to work, slurp down some caffeine, and try to make sense of our email and to-do list. Many people use caffeine to make the transition from slumped proto-human to functional worker, but here are some non-addictive ways to jumpstart your mental day:

Start your day with a puzzle. I freely admit stealing this from Trent of The Simple Dollar. Delve into your local paper; do the New York Times crossword puzzle, or check a puzzle book out of your local library. You don’t even need to opt for a dead-tree variety, either: pull up WebSudoku and pick a sufficiently challenging puzzle.

Work on your vocabulary. I recently spent several months studying for the GRE, including a solid vocabulary workout. If you wonder how knowing that taiga is an arctic forest will make you happier and more productive, consider this: English is a language that “runs down other languages in dark alleys and goes through their pocket for spare words,” and so the process of learning new words will teach you how to take words apart, attribute them to their source language, and learn a little bit about other cultures. You can pull out your old standardized test review books for this, or you can visit FreeRice.com, where you can “learn free vocabulary and give free rice.” Eradicating world hunger AND learning new words? That’s the kind of multi-tasking I like!

If you’re more of a contemplative, start your day with Poetry Daily. I enjoy reading the poem slowly, picking out phrases that catch my eye, and considering the meaning. If your only exposure to poetry has been high school English classes, then this resource will definitely broaden your horizons.

Learn a language while you commute. Audible.com has a good selection of language courses to purchase in audiobook format, but I wouldn’t be fit to run Frugal in the Fruitlands if I didn’t suggest that you try your local library or look for free language podcasts first. Natalia Worthington’s Spoonful of Russian is one that I enjoy, and is available free in the iTunes store.

Doodle. I wonder sometimes if my employers are offended by my doodling in meetings. I wish I could explain how it works for me - if all I have to do is listen (and not take notes), it’s actually really good for keeping me on target so that my mind doesn’t wander. It also seems to keep new ideas churning to the surface - something about doing something with my hands triggers a learning response. Maybe it’s a throwback to taking notes in high school and college.

When I was in college, I would start my day with Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast. There’s something about playing a fast-paced, highly reflex-based video/computer game to get the blood pumping in the morning. I don’t have a Wii, but I understand that that’s exactly what it’s good for. Hint: Don’t do this one at the office, unless maybe you work for Nintendo.

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The rumble in my stomach this morning could have been satisfied by some high fiber cereal and fruit at home, but I wanted to arrive early at the office to do some personal organization. The perfect solution appeared to be stopping off for a couple of breakfast tacos from a local shop on my way to work.

Now, keep in mind that I hardly ever even think about eating fast food. You’ll almost always catch me with a banana and green tea in the early hours of the day, as opposed to anything pre-made. That being said, there are times in which I go with perceived convenience because the work I’ll get done in the time saved is worth more to me than the price of paying for someone to make a bite to eat.

After having waited much too long and being overcharged for something I didn’t order, I was on my way from a thoroughly dissatisfying experience. Now, I find myself with a buck less in my pocket than I expected, but correcting their error would further put me in the hole with wanting to get to work extra early.

So, what was I witness to today? I was once again seeing a perfect illustration of the risk one takes when dealing with a lower-quality team of workers in hope of saving time. Sometimes, it makes sense to just do it yourself and be sure of the results. Life can be funny

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The personal computer in combination with the Internet has revolutionized the workplace in so many obvious ways, but these great advancements have potential pitfalls for the end users in professional settings. No matter the caliber of the employee toiling away in front of the monitor, there lies the possibility that the following three mistakes can be made on a fairly regular basis.

1. Losing track of your main goal.
2. Producing effort, not results.
3. Not relying on other members of the team.

Working on the web can be distracting with rampant ads and the ease of surfing over to non work-related sites with just one click. Even if all entertainment portals are shut off by either the employee or workplace, electronic work can ball up into a tangled mess of skewed priorities…unless you understand how to avoid such circumstances.

Losing track of your main goal generally occurs when there’s just “too much to handle” on the plate. Everyone can feel overloaded from time to time, but if use is made of effective technologies and work practices, then success will follow. Mixing and match assignments leads to a dangerous form of multi-tasking. Tread those waters with caution!

Producing effort and not results generally grows from not staying true to one’s job description. Stop exploring all sorts of new software updates and focus on the task(s) at hand. Sure, it’s fun to upgrade and dive into new features of whizbangwhatever v1.234, but in the end the only thing that matters is if the work gets done, properly. If there is time enough to cruise the web for new applications that could increase productivity, then go for it, but never lose sight of priorities and remember that workers are paid to produce work, not act as a casual web user.

Not relying on other members of a team at work can be quite damaging to one’s profile and reputation on the job. Even introverts have to learn eventually to plan, communicate and execute with fellow co-workers if they wish to create professional success and advancement. The more collaboration an employee is involved with over time, the more comfortable that person will be in such settings. Of course, comfort is conducive to confidence.

Keep it simple and stay focused, to avoid these three professional errors.

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Tech support is essential to the computer user, albeit an often enraging experience. Have no fear, for Protonic.com is here. Searching for answers to various ailments our state-of-the-art gadgets can quickly turn into a several hour long task consisting of sifting through hundreds of search results, which might leave you still wondering “how the heck do I fix this!?”. But, Protonic.com is a depository of relevant answers to both common and obscure software and hardware questions.

This group of hardcore techies make up the community known as Protonic and never ask for a dime. These guys run a tight ship while treating customers with respect, but without putting your wallet on a diet. People have been reporting for months now that Protonic team members reply to questions with thorough, helpful answers within hours of submitting through their site. Ditch your local “Geek Squad” and step up to the level of tech support that actually provides solutions - over 162,000 of them.

Whether your iPhone’s crashed, Vista needs tweaking, CSS won’t render, or whatever the case, get rid of the headache for free.

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