I try to do 5 things each morning. Realistically, if I hit three out of five, I consider myself having won the morning. And if you win the morning, you win the day. (See following quotes)
Step 1. Make Bed (< 3 minutes). This might seem ridiculous, but bear with me. To quote Naval Admiral William McRaven, head of JSOC (think Special Ops) during the Osama bin Laden raid: “If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task and another and another. By the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that little things in life matter.”
Step 2. Meditate (10 to 20 minutes). At least 80% of all guests profiled in Tools of Titans have a daily mindfulness practice of some type. Sometimes I will do “Happy Body” mobility exercises from Olympic weightlifter Jerzy Gregorek in place of meditation. Pattern: Males seem to gravitate to TM (tm.org) and women to vipassana, but it’s not 100% correlation, of course. The Headspace app also pops up a lot in my interviews.
Step 3. Do 5 to 10 Reps of Something (<1 minute). The 5 to 10 reps here are not a workout. They are intended to “state prime” and wake me up. Getting into my body, even for 30 seconds, has a dramatic effect on my mood and quiets mental chatter. I like pushups and planche leans with mini-parallettes or, ideally, pushups on rings (with turn out at the top), which light you up like a X-mas tree.
Step 4. Prepare “Titanium Tea” (this name was a joke, but it stuck) (2 to 3 minutes). I prepare loose-leaf tea in a Rishi glass teapot but you could use a French press. The below combo is excellent for cognition and fat loss, and I use about 1 flat teaspoon of each: Pu-erh aged black tea Dragon well green tea (or other green tea) Turmeric and ginger shavings (often also Rishi brand). Add the hot water to your mixture and let it steep for 1 to 2 minutes.
Step 5. Morning Pages or 5-Minute Journal (5 to 10 minutes). I use two types of journaling and alternate between them: Morning Pages and The 5-Minute Journal (5MJ). The former I use primarily for getting unstuck or problem solving (what should I do?); the latter I use for prioritizing and gratitude (how should I focus and execute?).
With routines, you don’t want your threshold for “success” to be checking 100% of the boxes. Look for 3/5 wins or 2/5 wins. Otherwise, the human inclination is self-sabotage with “Well, I miss A or B, so I failed today,” or “Now today is going to be harder” and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
On a routine he could not do: Ahhh… waking up at 4:45am consistently like former Navy SEAL Commander Jocko Willink or super athlete Amelia Boone! I’m a night owl, plain and simple. Fortunately, not all the world-class performers out there rise with the Amish. There are plenty of folks, like me, who are barely alive until 11am or later.
Success, however you define it, is achievable if you collect the right field-tested beliefs and habits.
You don’t “succeed” because you have no weaknesses; you succeed because you find your unique strengths and focus on developing habits around them.
I wake up probably somewhere between 8:30 and 10 AM; I tend to stay up late. Then I brew tea, which is typically Pu-erh tea with turmeric and ginger added to it, to which I add coconut oil, which is high in medium chain triglycerides, which the brain likes very much. I consume that as I sit down and journal.
I, every night, have a very hot soaking bath. No bubbles, no jets. That’s sacrilegious.
Sometimes, peculiar routines are the key to sanity and productivity.
