Morning Routines: Yay or Nay?

Last week, I recorded the inaugural episode for my podcast, How They Get Stuff Done.

My guest was Sabyasachi Sengupta, a friend of mine who is an accomplished speaker and now also an author.

Saby recently published his first book and I asked him how he got himself to show up, day after day, to write that book. He told me about his morning routine, which was very structured. (Listen to the episode to learn how he made sure he didn’t spend too much time showering every morning.)

Morning routines have been on my mind for the last few weeks. For me, they’re a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, a routine removes the endless decision-making on what to work on next. That saves a tremendous amount of energy. A routine also allows you to get your most important tasks out of the way early, increasing your flexibility to deal with whatever the day brings.

On the other hand, I like to go with the flow; I like to follow my creative energy. Say I wake up and I’m immediately excited to work on a new course. Then I don’t want to stretch, shower, and shave first.

Maybe you recognize your own situation in my description.

I’ve been leaving my days unstructured for a long time now and I’m getting tired of dealing with the same problems of indecision and postponing work. It’s boring to always deal with the same problems. We’ll never be problem-free, but switching up the problems you’re dealing with can get some new energy going.

So I might do a 30-day morning routine challenge soon. I would design a morning routine for myself, down to the minute, and follow it for 30 days straight. That should give me enough time to evaluate whether I like it better than how I currently plan (or don’t plan) my days. At the very least it’ll give me a new set of problems to deal with.

If you have a morning routine, what does it look like? Just send me a short reply to this email. I’d love to get some inspiration.