Continuing with our theme of September as the “new year” reset, I’m on a bit of a reset binge myself.
Over the next 30 days or so (I mean, it is the 3rd already), I’m going to be diving into a few habits that I know from experience have made my life and work better and more balanced.
To get there, I find I need to be very structured in my approach. This means ensuring I have a very specific time set aside daily for my own routines, as well as precise blocks for tasks during the day.
It also means making sure I’m highly regimented when it comes to eating. Left to my own devices, I can graze all day long and not even notice it; such is the danger of running a business and working from home.
While I’m working full-time in my main business, I also manage a couple of blogs (including this one), and have a few other irons in the fire. Scheduling time to get everything done is always tricky, but it’s nothing I haven’t done before. Here’s what I’m working on for September in terms of habit forming, to get myself better focus and tick the boxes I need ticked before everyone else is out of bed.
It’s All About the Morning
Morning is my “golden time” for motivation. That’s always been a given for me, and so I need to break the habit of checking email and social media first thing in the morning (some of my work involves partners and contacts overseas, so their emails do come in overnight).
Some experts will tell you that you need to get your meditation, gratitude, journaling, exercise, planning, and three hours of solid work in before 9 a.m. Well, we can’t all do everything all at once, and there are good reasons to do certain things early, when motivation is at its highest.
For myself, I know that I am most creative in the morning, and I know that I’m most inclined to exercise in the morning as well. I have no issue setting a regular wake up time of 5:00. Kiddo is out of bed between 6 and 7, but doesn’t leave for school until 8:30. He’s big enough now that I can exercise or work while he’s doing his own thing in the morning, but meditation, planning, and inner work need solitude for me.
Still, that’s three and a half hours to get it all in. Let’s leave 8 to 8:30 for showering and call it three hours. I can work with that. The key here is to remember that this is for me to get centred, not to add extra stress. These are MY moments in the day. But, if I can consistently check these off every morning, I know there’s improvement happening before I even get to work, and that’s worth its weight in gold.
Rituals
I have a sequence of breaths that I take as part of a morning ritual to open up my upper back and chest after lying down for the night. I’ll show it to you some time.
That’s the first thing I do. The second thing is to hit my coffee maker, and turn on some scents for the day. My personal favourites are of course the fall scents with cinnamon and spices, but you do you.
Then we’re into the habits…
Habit 1: Water
We all know we need a shot of water first thing in the morning. I used to chug back a full 16 oz serving, but that actually made the rest of the routine hard to…well, stomach. So I’ve switched to 8 oz and that really hits the spot for me.
Habit 2: Mobility
With my water out of the way (and my coffee brewing), I run through an “anti-desk” mobility routine to open the hips, shoulders, and upper back. It’s a great routine you can also use later in the day to offset those deskbound cobwebs that set in during the afternoon slump. This one takes about 7 or 8 minutes, and ends with a corpse pose…instead of which, I do…
Habit 3: Meditation & Visualization
Ten minutes of morning meditation. There are a few I like on YouTube. For the most part, these are in the manifestation/visualization area, just to get me visualizing how great my day is going to be.
Habit 4: Journaling & Gratitude
Are you keeping track? This is taking us to about 5:32 a.m. Having just visualized how my day is going to go, it’s time to do a quick bit of journaling to lean into my goals and tasks for the day and lock in what I need to do by lunchtime. This bit of planning is crucial, because if anyone needs to have that time blocked out it’s this guy!
Check out my Gratitude Journal and 90-Day Success Planner on Amazon.
Habit 5: Breath Work
If you know anything about me, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of the Wim Hof Method. We can get all up in the science of it, or argue about whether the meditative state is really about a euphoria from hyperventilation (it is, of course). But that doesn’t matter so much for what I’m using it for. For me, I’m working on my lung capacity, and on some of the other health benefits (note: this one isn’t for everyone, so if you have any heart or blood pressure issues, or concerns about dizziness, you might want to try belly breathing instead).
Here’s the thing about making this one work: you can use the retention phase (the periods where you exhale and stop breathing for as long as possible) as an additional visualization. In this phase, I like to visualize mobilizing my body’s cells to heal areas of pain or discomfort. Or, you can just drift along to the music and Wim’s voice. Totally your call.
For this work, I prefer using the app, as it tracks my progress day-to-day. If you just want to try it out you can always start with one of his beginner YouTube videos for guidance. As I’m not a certified WHM instructor, I can’t give you much more advice than that. Just don’t do it in the bathtub or while driving.
Three rounds of this takes me about 10 or 11 minutes, depending on how long my breath holds are. I’m doing a standard breathing rate right now just to get back into it. You can follow along with my progress HERE.
At this point, I’ll start making munchkin’s breakfast. It’s maybe quarter to six…he could be up at 6 or 7…best to be prepared.
Habit 6: The Workouts
This is pretty simple. Three days a week I do strength training and conditioning. The other days I do HIIT cardio, usually in short bursts. As I said, I can do these with kids around as they don’t need silence or the privacy of my thoughts to do it.
Habit 7: The Work
So, now we’re at about 6:30-ish. That’s time to get some writing done, draft some posts, and set up some graphics for the blogs. These aren’t the things that will move my heavy lifting jobs for the day, but they’re still in that creative zone of my early morning routine.
Habit 8: The Shower
Whoa…what a shock. Guy sweats it out in the morning and then takes a shower! Well, yes and no. Again, we’re back to the Wim Hof app and the cold shower challenge. I won’t get into the guts of why that’s a good idea, but the showers themselves aren’t really that cold, and the cold part isn’t really that long (for this stage of the game). We’re basically talking about 15 to 60 seconds, five days a week, for 20 days. No big deal. And you start with a timer for 5 minutes in a warm shower. That actually lets you get cleaned up FAST, so you can do this whole shower in about six minutes.
I’ll follow this up with my skincare routine. Yes, I have a skincare routine. Yes, I have to remember to do it. Yes, you can read about the best routine for men’s skincare right here.
It’s Really About the Night Before
I know I said it’s all about the morning, but realistically it’s about the night before. Setting up the stuff for the morning, including the coffee maker, the apps, the water, the workout gear, the journaling stuff, and even my clothes for the day, becomes part of the nightly ritual as well.
I learned a long time ago that the key to a successful and seamless morning is getting everything prepared the night before. It’s really as simple as that.
What Happens Next?
After resetting the morning routine, I need to look at how my days run. Once the kids are at school, there’s a whole work day that needs to be tackled too. That’ll be for another article; but, as someone who works at a desk doing business things, let me just give you a spoiler:
- Blocking and batching saves a ton of time.
- Get your most time-consuming, focus-heavy tasks out of the way in the first half of the day.
- Plan time for a proper lunch, a walk, and maybe a stretch break.
- Be prepared for an afternoon slump; mundane, boring, and mindless tasks are best served here.
- Give yourself time at the end of the day to actually end your day.
Do It Yourself
As a life coach, it’s easy for me to tell you that this is the best system for setting yourself up for success. But, it’s not. It’s one that works for me. In fact, you’ll find thousands of coaches online promoting the “perfect morning routine” for whatever measure of success you’re looking for. Do NOT assume that your mode of effectiveness is necessarily wrong because it doesn’t align with theirs.
Maybe you’re not a morning person at all, and need to handle your self-care in the evening instead. Maybe you’ve got several kids who take up a ton of your energy in the morning, and who are up from the second you hit the floor (or even earlier). Maybe you’re the sort of person who likes to get their work tasks out of the way while everyone else in the world is still sleeping.
None of these is better, or worse. This is one that works for me: up at 5, take care of myself for that first hour. Take care of my creative tasks until it’s time to clean up and get kids to school. Then take care of my routine work day.
And that’s fine. It works, and it’s what I’m doing to get back on track for my September. Feel free to give it a try. And if you like it, or you like something else, let us know in the comments!