One thing I’ve come to appreciate, is my morning routine. I was always a morning person but I was never that intentional about what I was doing each morning. In Darren Hardy’s book “The Compound Effect” he talks about creating a morning routine. Basketball players, golfers, baseball players all create pre-shot routines to help ensure they will perform consistently every time. How you start your morning sets the course for the whole day. Here is how I’ve been starting my day…
I typically start my day with stretches and crunches. I’ve had back problems off and on over the years and decided a couple of years ago to keep a consistent routine of warming up each morning. I do stretches for about 5 minutes, another 15 minutes of crunches and another 5 minutes of stretches. I do this religiously and haven’t missed a day in years.
Next, I do some free-form writing. I heard about this from Farnoosh Brock on her Prolific Living podcast. The idea is to write about 3 pages every morning. In the morning your mind is clear and writing can help you get your thoughts together. 3 pages or 750 words is a good length to shoot for. I use a website called www.750words.com. This makes it easy to write each morning, tracks the length of your writing, and helps keep you consistent.
After my writing, I exercise. I’ve found the only way I can be consistent with my exercising is doing it in the morning. It also gets your blood flowing and gives you energy for the day. I either do the treadmill or go out for a walk. I target about 10,000 steps each day. I use the fitbit device to track my steps. Now, I also like the ida of combining my exercise with learning. So I either read when I’m on the treadmill or listen to an audiobook while walking. I can get through about a book every week by following this routine. I get my cardio and I enhance my mind at the same time!
Next I spend a few minutes planning my day. I’m currently using Trello to do my planning. Trello works like a Kanban board where you create different lanes and put your tasks on the board. I can then review my current projects, make updates, move my priorities for the day around and get myself set for what I need to accomplish for the day. In addition, I have the rest of my team using this software also, so it makes it easy for me to assign tasks to someone else’s board or see what they have going for the day.
After that, time to shower, grab a quick breakfast and head into the office.
This routine helps me set the course for my day. I’ve gotten my exercise in, did some creative writing, got some reading or audio books in and planned what I need to accomplish for the day. By the time I hit the office, all sorts of things can happen. But no matter what, I’ve had a great morning and I’m ready for whatever the day may bring.
About what do you usually write? Is there a theme?
Not really a theme. More of a “brain dump” on ideas or problems. I’m finding that it helps clarify my thinking if I lay out the problem and then try to work it through on my virtual paper. I like the idea of doing it early too. I think that if I did it in the evening I would tend to just document my day. This ends up being just whatever is on my mind at the time and tends to be a problem or an issue that I am trying to solve.