azazil.net

I’ve already written at some length about the importance of morning routine, but since I’ve been slowly slipping back towards my old nocturnal habits, I recently made a public resolution to get back on the wagon of waking up early. And that means I need to have a solid morning routine I can perform to fill the void between my alarm going off at 6am and starting work at 7:30am.

My main motivation for pursuing this is that if I don’t make a running start at weekdays, I end up working into the evening and backfilling incomplete tasks at the weekend. In order to sustain my heavy workload (I have around 50 hours of paid work per week), and still have time for my family, friends, hobbies, and this blog(!!) I like to be able to switch out of work mode in time for dinner, and have the whole weekend to socialise… and that means I have 10 hours of work to do every day. Since I want to stop at 6pm, and take a half-hour lunch break, that means I need to be firing on cylinders by the time I start at 7:30am.

The fly in the ointment is that I’m really terrible at waking up. Until a few months ago, I usually slept between the hours of 4am and 11am or later, and could turn my alarm off without even waking. And I was always late. For everything. Making an early start has been a real effort of will for me, especially now that the novelty has worn off. I’m counting on being able to get a strong habit ingrained for a morning routine that I’ll be able to do on autopilot, so that I’ll be under the shower before I realise that I’m already underway with the day. The first stage of building that habit is to define a morning routine that wakes me up reasonably gently, and gets me to full energy levels within 90 minutes.

• 6:00am: As soon as I’ve turned my alarm off, drink a glass of water, then head for the bathroom and turn on the shower while I brush my teeth;
• 6:05am: Step into a nice hot shower;
• 6:20am: Dress, head to the kitchen and make breakfast;
• 6:30am: Enjoy a breakfast of cereal, fruit, water and a hot drink with Tave;
• 7:00am: Make lunch;
• 7:15am: Gentle exercise and stretches;
• 7:30am: Start work.

Since I get a wierd satisfaction from ticking off TODO items, every evening I’m adding some entries to my next Moleskine day page that I can tick off as I do them to give myself a positive feeling of having begun the day by accomplishing something. This is what I put in today’s page last night:

Related Articles

1. Groundhog Resolution Review Day.
2. On Being an Early Riser: Progress Report.
3. On Being an Early Riser
4. Moleskine Planner Time Tracker Hack.
5. Pocket Diary Moleskine Hack.