What is up everyone? This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder and CEO of Morning Brew.

Welcome back to Founders Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you the business builder,

the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business,

a team, or a new product. And no matter what you're building, something that will dictate the

success of the work you do is the way in which you do your work. When it comes to my work,

I have one very specific goal at the start of every single work day. And that is to go about my day

in a way that I feel good about doing the things I said I was going to do by the end of the day.

It may sound a bit ambiguous, but I think you know the feeling. There are some days where you've

been in a zone, crank through things that needed to get done, and didn't have your attention

splintered by social media, Slack, and other distractions. Those days feel amazing.

Then you have the days where you never hit your flow. You get working on the things that must get

done, but then all of the things that compete for your attention get in the way. My goal is to have

more of the former than the latter. And while my system isn't perfect, I do have a system for

trying to make that happen for myself. And I encourage you all to find and design your own system

for working as well. There are three parts of my system, the setup, the allocation, and the

environment. And I promise when I'm working through my day, I'm not literally saying to myself,

I'm about to start the allocation. But when I think back on the way in which I work,

and this is how I bucket it, let me take you through each. It starts with the setup.

For a long time, founders, journal listeners, you may remember the episode where I talk about

Charlie, my golf instructor, and the importance he places on my pre-shot routine, which are basically

all the things I do before hitting a golf ball. The setup is basically the pre-shot routine of my

work day. It is the list of the non-negotiables that I do each day prior to getting my work started.

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