I’ve always fantasized about having a real grownup morning routine. It started in college, many years ago, where I had lived with my first girlfriend in a messy apartment in Haifa. I can barely remember what my routine looked like in those days. But I remember fantasizing about waking up in the morning, and slowly sipping coffee while reading the paper: Adult, unrushed, confident in my place in the world and settled into a comfortable, supportive routine. For years, though, it remained a fantasy.
Mornings hold the greatest promise of any part of our day, but also the greatest peril. As our faculties slowly kick into gear, we are vulnerable to old addictions like social media or obsessive email checking, and what we do in those precious first minutes can either help us connect to our true selves, feelings, and priorities — or throw us deeper into the churn of distraction.
1. Get Out the Door
Years ago, when I was still living in Brooklyn, someone mentioned to me the idea of going for a walk outside, first thing in the morning. Letting yourself wake up in the world, not in your head. I loved this idea, and in my last 3 years in Brooklyn I started every morning with an hour long walk in my beloved Prospect Park. Wake up, put on pants, and get out the door. (Sometime, I would stop at the Dub Pies shop to get coffee and a New Zealand meat pie.)
I’ve never been more in touch with myself as I’ve been during the years where this was my morning routine. Walking in the beautiful, ever changing park, put me in touch with my own thinking, with the world, and with the change of seasons. It later became my habit to send a girl I’d been seeing one beautiful picture from the park every day. To this day, these are some of my favorite pictures I ever took, as they represented time and change, but also intention and selective attention.
When I read an article about untranslatable words from other languages, the Japanese word Komorebi (木漏れ日) caught my eye. It means “when sunlight filters through the trees — the interplay between the light and the leaves.” This immediately resonated. I had spent so many hours looking at the beautiful luminescence of leaves lit from behind by the sun, during my morning routine in the park.
But times change, and I no longer live near a beautiful park. I live in a desert country, where for much of the year, an hour long walk outside sounds anything but relaxing. So for the past few years, I have been working on a new morning routine. And it finally seems to be clicking into place.
2. Wait for the Right Moment
Changing a habit is tough when you’re already in the groove of your existing habit. I find that habits are easiest to change when there’s been some change in your life that took you out of the old habits. Moving is a great opportunity for crafting new routines, but I found that just returning from a trip that’s a couple of weeks long offers a chance at rewriting your habit. I’ve recently returned from a 3 week work trip abroad, and noticed the opportunity to either rewrite my habits or fall back into the old routine. I opted for change, and I went about intentionally crafting my ideal morning routine.
3. Keep Yourself Occupied After Waking
You need a clear task that will be rewarding, achievable in a sleepy state, and which provides the opportunity to fully wake up, without the temptation of turning to your devices. In the past, the task was – get dressed and go out the door. That is very effective. I’ve also tried to use coffee making as this first task, but there are a couple of reasons this didn’t work. (One of them is that my coffee making routine is quite complex and required me to be fully awake already.) It was also less effective than walking out the door because it didn’t cut me off from distractions. My new first activity: get in the shower. Sometimes – I will play a podcast, but if I’m honest this works best with just music.
4. Give Yourself a Payoff
Books like The Power of Habit explain the science behind what we know about habit formation. The basic idea is that habits are made of 3 parts: Trigger, Activity, and Payoff. Without a payoff, new habits are unlikely to “take.” Which is why when I get out of the shower, I make myself a delicious cup of coffee (Blue Bottle Coffee’s Giant Steps blend is my current favorite, and I use an Aeropress to make it), and sit down at my beautiful dinning room table to read something short and meaningful.
I am currently reading one section of How to Live Japanese – which fulfills my intellectual curiosity, followed by one poem from the late Mary Oliver’s Devotions – which is the closest thing I’ve found in this life to a morning walk in the park. (Many of Oliver’s poems are about her walks in nature.)
5. Compounded Habits are Great
Habits can be serialized, with the Payoff of one being the Trigger for another. I am still experimenting with this, but I noticed that Mary Oliver’s poems make me want to meditate. It’s like they trigger a moment of mindfulness and connection with the preciousness of life, and that makes me want to stay in that realm a little bit longer. Keeping my meditation schedule has never been easier.
I’m now trying to incorporate other elements, and thinking in terms of triggers and payoffs is really helping me think like a designer, and creating better combinations.
6. Track, Learn, and Embrace Messiness
When I started this new routine, I knew I needed some form of accountability and a way to learn from my mistakes and catch them. I came up with this super simple tracking table, which I posted on the door to the shower – one of the first things I see when I wake up, and something I pass by all day long.
On this sheet of paper, I included a clear definition of success ( Shower > Dress > Coffee > Books > Meditate), a simple place for a checkmark each day (this is a binary, succeed or fail), as well as a larger space to draw how I’m feeling or add detail to each day.
This allowed me to track, accept the messy nature of habit formation, and learn from it as it evolves. You’ll notice I got a stomach virus on the 7th and 8th and that affected my morning routine. You’ll also notice digital distractions kept creeping back in. I started leaving my phone charging in the next room, but then the iPad magically showed up near the bed and cost me some minutes. My next challenge is going to be training myself not to leave any digital devices near me, and not to reach out for them at all first thing in the morning.
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I will keep evolving my morning routine, and I’m already experimenting with adding some new aspects to it. (Like writing a short blog post each day.) But overall I am beginning to get comfortable with my new routine, and barring some big change in life circumstance (which I’m sure will happen eventually) – I think I’ll stick with it. Once this routine feels settled, I’ll probably tackle other corners of my day and week – like the evening routine, the weekend, or the workday itself. More to follow!
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