Beans Beans, They're Good for Your Heart...
Coffee beans, of course!
There's nothing worse than feeling unprepared. Especially when the success of the next 12 hours depends on your personal ability to be up, ready, prepared and motivated to attack the day's news. But before we dive into the necessity of coffee, let's get us to the newsroom.
My routine in the morning is as follows. Groggily, at 6 a.m., I wake up and turn on the news. Falling in and out of snooze cycles, I make it to the shower with some idea of the top stories by 6:40. I'm in the newsroom by 7:05 and by 8, my morning ideas (which really are more evening/morning ideas) are ready to go. But the meeting is a whole different beast.
Up to this point there’s been no need for chipper attitude or perfect attentiveness — at least compared to the rest of the day. Simply put, it's time to wake up. So I've turned to caffeine, and I find it to be a magical elixir for motivating the unmotivated. Taken in moderation, it revs your engine just enough to get you focused without wearing you down.
From there, I can focus on managing the meeting. My main objective is to always keep in mind that by 9:30 that I have enough stories with enough depth up on the board to have a show. But I can almost over-focus on this. The one thing I'd say I definitely need to improve upon, is managing earl-morning event situations. There have been several opportunities to get stories from events early in the morning and by waiting until after the meeting, we miss the opportunity. Just as it is important to come into the meeting prepared, it's equally as important to remember that news – and the world around it – doesn't stop for the meeting. I've got to stay on top of assigning and sending MJ's as soon as I know where we want them to go.
But really, none of this can happen unless I can walk in awake and excited. So thanks, coffee beans for that extra boost!
