The Anatomy of a Good Morning
Mike St. Pierre is the founder of The Daily Saint, a productivity blog focusing on work-life balance. www.thedailysaint.com I live for the sunrise, though I never used to be a morning person by any stretch of the imagination. I used to make an art of staying up late, not doing anything overwhelmingly productive, followed by a morning of sleeping in and slogging through the day. This is all past tense for me now. Today I choose to get up early and start the day on my own terms. It doesn’t mean that I control every detail of each day or that my kids’ sleeping patterns are 100% predictable. My choice is rooted in three things: o Starting the day “right” is about practicality. o Starting the day “before” it comes, is a secret to productivity. o Starting the day “in the zone” is about routine. A practical choice I have, on several occasions, been asked by my students if I’ve ever been intoxicated. My answer is boring no. They’re so disappointed when I go on to tell them that my answer isn’t rooted so much in some passage from Scripture or a desire to be more virtuous. No, my answer is rooted in this: I like to have control over my body. Choosing to get up early is very similarit’s more practical than staying up late and barely getting through the day. When I start the day on my own terms, I get a sense that I’ve already accomplished something. Something small, yes but something real nonetheless. It’s not that I’m “beating out” the next guy on my way to work but rather that I am caring about my own existence enough to craft one part of my day in a way that sets the table for the rest of my waking hours. A secret to productivity Starting the day right is also about being a productive person. The more productive I am, the more I learn about stewardship and life takes on deeper levels of “success”. I make precise adjustments in my morning routines and am willing to change if it helps a certain habit improve in the slightest of ways. The type of alarm clock I use, the hour of rising, the breakfast I eat- all of these help me start my day in a way that works for me. The key is also to start the night before. Getting to bed early, laying out your clothes, setting breakfast plates out and polishing shoes are all simple steps to gliding through a morning routine. Snip out all things, no matter how small, that get in the way of starting the day on your own terms. Routines that promote zoning Starting the day in an intentional way leans heavily on the art of getting in the zone. Zoning is about creating a routine that is followed every single time. Major League Baseball player Nomar Garciaparra is a perfect example. Prior to each and every single at-bat, he cycles through an elaborate yet simple process of fastening and unfastening his batting gloves and adjusting his feet. This serves as a relaxing mechanism and helps him to be fully present to the moment in front of him- total concentration for the 95mph fastball heading his way.
All of us can replicate some sort of routine to help us start the morning right. Instead of batting gloves, it’s about getting to bed early the night before. Instead of adjusting one’s foot positioning, it’s about laying out clothes and ironing that shirt. It’s about preparing a healthy breakfast that doesn’t take an hour to put together. It’s about the car having gas in the tank instead of having to stop on the way to work. It’s about simple steps that keep you moving so that the unimportant stuff doesn’t bog you down. A successful morning is one which allows you to think less about small things and focus more on the priorities that should ultimately guide our life. What will your morning routine look like in the next week or two? It’s never too late to create something special or improve a practice that’s already in place. See you in the morning.