Life Hacking

Resuscitating my Morning Routine

My morning routine probably sounds like most people. Wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, drink lot's of coffee, consume Twitter and FB feeds until I have to make a mad dash out the door. I really felt my morning routine was just a waste of energy and time and I should just teleport directly to work. I tried a couple things but couldn't break my routine.

My previous morning routine can easily be summed up like "Fred the Baker" from the 1980's Dunkin' Donuts commercials.

Time to make the Donuts

That is until this tweet:

Day 2 of no snooze week: Another blog post drafted on the train, which I hope to edit & publish on the way home. Feeling good.
— Fred Rivett (@FredRivett) October 13, 2015

This single Tweet really struck a chord with me. Thanks Fred (make sure to give him a follow)! Something so simple really changed my outlook and the way I should spend my time. I wanted to try it out for myself by being productive during my morning commute in the train.

The first couple days blew my socks off. I couldn't believe the time that I was not utilizing on my 45 minute train commute to and from work. I started working on some GitHub and Docker projects. Wow, what a difference. However a couple days later I took my family to Arizona for a vacation. Before the trip I thought I would really like to investigate how to optimize my morning routine further. After asking Mr. Google and a couple friends the consensus directed me to one resource The Morning Miracle (Affiliate link)

I started reading the book on the 15+ hour travel time between Switzerland and Arizona. By the time we landed I was buzzing with excitement and ready to hit the ground running. I slowly adapted the rules I learned in the book the best way I could considering my 4 month old was stuck on Swiss time while visiting Arizona. I was up at 5 everyday on holiday following the steps I learned in the book. My day started off better and better the more I followed the process.

I returned back to Switzerland and I'm still going strong with my Miracle Morning routine. Up at 5am and waking up like everyday is Christmas morning.

Each morning I start out with S.A.V.E.R.S. It’s an acronym that breaks out to be:
S = Silence
A = Affirmations
V = Visualization
E = Exercise
R = Reading
S = Scribing (or journaling )

The one book I've read this year that has really impacted me The Morning Miracle (Affiliate link). Life hacking my morning routine has really inspired me to do more. Let's see where this leads..