My Daily Routine

Sunrise

I’ve often struggled with finding a consistent pattern of starting my day. It bothered me, because I’ve heard of how many successful people use it as a way to jumpstart their day. And it makes intuitive sense: To create a consistently focused mind space, prep it for the day in a consistent way.

Recently however, I think I’ve hit on something that works. Here’s how it goes.

Morning

Never being an early riser, my alarm is set to ring at 9am. That said, I usually find myself too awake to sleep by about 8-8:30am, and stagger out to feed Wembley, our pet bunny.

I used to move from here into a half-hour of Pilates, followed by breakfast, washing up, etc., but this always created stress for me. Instead, I sit down on my computer, and begin with the most enjoyable work of the day – my track.

I’ve found that delaying doing at least some of my work for any longer than this starts making me feel like I’m procrastinating. And the ironic thing is, it often does result in procrastination, as rising stress pushes me into less productive coping mechanisms.

Video games, here I come!

Putting an hour or two into my work helps remind me what I’m doing this for. This is followed by about 15 minutes of meditation on the Brightmind App, which I do in the backyard if the weather isn’t looking too ornery.

(I’m currently working on the “Achieving Your Goals” section, but it’s extra challenging, because the speaker has a distractingly sexy voice. Don’t judge me.)

To further my meditation and help my body remember what a non-sitting/non-curled position feels like, I go fo a 15 minute walk up the nearby bike path. The forested area we live near always puts me in a more calm, positive mood, and cuts my Pilates time in half.

I’d look forward to Pilates more if it came with Netflix.

Afternoon

At this point I’m using getting hungry, it’s breaktime for brunch, during which I read a book, usually on either philosophy, psychology (really loving Scattered Minds by Gabor Maté), or if anxiety is high, some sword-bucklin’ high fantasy.

Finally, it’s back to work. I currently have a few different projects I’m working on, including learning how to DJ, learning Pro Tools, creating risers for a future sound pack… It’s a beautiful mess.

I sometimes break once or twice during this to stretch out my hip flexors and pecs, without which I would slowly curl up and turn into a snare shell.

It could happen to you…

Evening

There’s not much to tell beyond this point, other than a nice meal with my wife, followed by tv and various substances designed to make the evening more enjoyable (all above-board, I assure you).

Nice as all this is, I realize things will shake up considerably once I find more serious work, but I hope the basic structure, at least the morning part, doesn’t change too much. Because the experts were right on this one – a good morning strategy is very effective for setting the mindset for the day.

How ’bout you folks? What’s your morning mindset strategy?

Credits:

“Brown and Green Grass Field during Sunset” by Jonathan Petersson from Pexels

“Free stock photo of apartment at home, beautiful home” Photo by cottonbro from Pexels

“Close Up Photo of White Snail” by Sarah Trummer from Pexels

“Unrecognizable trendy woman lying on street bench near wall with inscription on autumn day” by Анна Галашева from Pexels

“Young woman lying on floor on mat while using laptop at home” by Karolina Grabowska from Pexels

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