My Morning Routine

@londonrom Hey thanks Romain! Oh, there’s almost too many things to mention! It actually starts with your evening routine, because if you don’t have a good night’s sleep, you’re not going to be able to have much of a morning routine to speak of. One way you can do this is having a rule to not allow phones or any other screens, including television sets and laptops, in your bedroom. If you can put down your phone approximately one how before you go to bed, you should then choose to read in bed, ideally fiction or something that has nothing to do with your work, until you feel sleepy enough to fall asleep. To get up, many of the people we interviewed place their alarm (phone) in another room, so that they need to get out of bed to turn it off. Key here is to place another habit trigger nearby so that you don’t jump back into bed. Some put their workout clothes nearby for an early exercise, others have their coffee machine automated to brew fresh coffee as soon as their alarm kicks off. This also eliminates snoozing, in fact over ninety percent of the people we interviewed for the book don’t hit the snooze button in the morning. Other popular habits are meditation, creating a daily task list the night before, reducing distractions around you (both on and offline), and creative and productive work while your mind is still fresh. It’s about starting your morning with intention and bringing your morning “wins” with you into the rest of the day. Every trend and similarity that we discovered while putting the book together we have detailed at the end of each chapter. The main thing to take away from the book is that there’s no one right way to start your day. The book gives you a peek into the lives of busy, successful people, and actually makes it simple to replicate what they do, but that doesn’t mean you need to replicate any one routine exactly. There’s this great line in the book from the writer Shaka Senghor in which he states: “Find a routine that works for you. Do not feel pressured to adjust to other people’s standards of what your morning should look like. Be flexible and know when to pivot to make things as simple as possible for yourself.” Don’t feel you need to change your whole routine all at once. Keeping your routine short and easy to accomplish, especially in the beginning, will greatly increase your chances of sticking to it over the long term. --- To my own routine… My alarm is set for 6:44am every day, but I usually wake up naturally between 5 and 6:30am (summer on the earlier side; winter on the latter), the alarm just gives me piece of mind—one less thing to worry about. I don’t snooze, so as long as I don’t wake up much earlier than 5am and I feel awake, I get out of bed quickly, when I do however wake up earlier I try to trigger another full sleep cycle. About four years ago I used to not use an alarm on the weekend, but I’ve learned that I feel much fresher and more balanced throughout the week when I get up during the same timespan every day. It makes it easy for my internal clock to predict the right time, as it doesn’t get confused by ever changing parameters. Likewise, this means I have to be strict with my bedtime, which is between 10:30 and 11:15pm. On days I’m on events late into the night, I usually decide to turn off my alarm if there’s not enough time for 4 sleep cycles (6 hours), as I’ve found that being able to adapt is more beneficial to me than being too rigorous about the exact schedule of my morning routine. Upon getting up I drink a big glass of water, let some fresh air into the apartment, and do three sets of push-ups and air squats to get my blood flowing. After a quick bathroom stop, I’ll fix myself some rolled oats with one banana sliced in and cold milk. I try to be “present” when I have breakfast, so I’ll leave my phone in another room. The end of breakfast triggers either a first work task or a leisure activity. If I’m deep into an engineering or design project, I usually can’t wait to get back into it so I’ll pick one important task to work on first thing. Otherwise I use my fresh mind to read a book for about an hour, go for a walk with weights in my rucksack, or go to the basketball court for half an hour. I’ll then hit the bathroom and get myself ready, which triggers and puts me into work mode.

@michaxndr audiobooks, ftw! :)

@fanahova Thanks Alessio. It’s available as of today. You can also order it on Amazon.it :)

@fanahova <33333