My Morning Routine
At the moment, my morning routine is as follows:
- Static hip stretching (15 minutes)
- Dip in the sea (15 minutes, including shower)
- Meditation + red light therapy (15 minutes)
- Plan the day (15 minutes)
Which sums to about an hour. I sleep without an alarm clock, go to bed consistently around 21:30, and tend to wake up around 06:00, so the morning routine is usually from 06:00-07:00. Each activity is carefully chosen, as is the order and the time of day.
The Morning Is Superior for Routines
I have discovered that the morning is, by far, the part of the day that lends itself most easily to a fixed routine which could and should become a habit to truly persist as a routine. A habit needs a trigger to be most effective. That is, it depends on whatever happened before and then on having the time to execute the habit. In the morning, nothing ever happened before. Waking up is the start of the day and the trigger; there is no noise from the rest of the day’s activities and no risk that other plans interfere with either the trigger or the time allotted to the routine.
This holds especially for my days, since I block out the entire forenoon for Deep Work and thereby have no time-sensitive obligations that could interfere with a routine. (I can accept that the Deep Work block absorbs the variance from waking up on my own time). Such obligations could be dealt with by using an alarm clock, of course, but nothing is more important than sleep, so having to sacrifice sleep for the morning routine would create a trade-off that I’d prefer not to face.
The evening does not offer the same stability, for me at least. Although I strive to leave work at the same time each day, I cannot fully rely on this to occur. Further, the variance in what I do after work is quite significant—it is basically the only part of my day that I keep relatively open and flexible. I may decide to go to the gym, practice piano, read, write, watch TV, go on a date, etc. Many of these activities can interfere with the routine itself by using up its allotted time, and the mere fact that my evening has so much variance makes habit formation difficult—it is almost impossible to design a reliable trigger.
Finally, I have the least fatigue in the morning and the most in the evening. Consequently, I have the most discipline in the morning and the highest chance of following through on the routine. Whenever I have attempted to build an evening routine, I have to face my fluctuating levels of motivation and fatigue. On some days, I am so exhausted that ending the day in any other way than by chilling on the couch with a TV show seems insurmountable. My ability to stick to a routine is severely hampered by this—I will end up following it only on good days, and the lack of consistency blocks the routine from turning into a proper habit. My energy varies much less in the morning, so the number of days where I have to push through lack of motivation will be significantly smaller.
Interestingly, while executing a routine like the one above requires a certain level of willpower, which gets exhausted like a battery or an exercised muscle during the day, it does not drain willpower much—at least once it has become a habit. If I attempted to do all four things in the evening, it would be an uphill battle every day. When I do it in the morning, it requires some willpower. Afterwards, it does not, however, feel like it has drained any of my willpower. To the contrary, the dip in the sea especially feels like it gives a surge of motivation and energy that lasts for hours. Similarly, the meditation sets a tone for the day that better allows me to go the distance. When placed in the morning, in other words, the routine seems to add to my willpower, even though it requires willpower for me to execute it. Truly a curious positive-sum game.
Components of the Routine
Static hip stretching
Static hip stretching improves hip mobility and forces me to endure a bit of pain or unpleasant sensations as the first thing when I wake up.
Hip mobility is an issue for many office workers who sit in chairs all day. Its lack contributes to poor standing and walking body posture (anterior pelvic tilt, for example), which tends to accompany forward head posture. Forward head posture puts excessive strain on the ligaments in the neck which can lead to neck pain and headaches. It also encourages a poor oral posture (open mouth, tongue hanging loose in the lower jaw) which leads to a worsening of the face (narrowing of upper jaw, receding lower jaw) and an associated narrowing of the airways and weakening of the tongue and jaw muscles, which together leads to malocclusion and disturbed sleep from snoring or sleep apnea. Finally, it may limit range of motion in squat-like exercises, thereby limiting muscle growth.
Enduring unpleasant sensations requires the exercise of willpower against resistance: You feel that you do not want to do something, and yet you choose to do it anyways, because you know it will benefit you in the long run. Every time you do this, you stimulate those neural circuits associated with discipline and self-control. You build your capacity for following through on plans previously made. You build your resistance towards the impulsivity that results from being at the mercy of your emotions. Additionally, having done something unpleasant you set a tone for the day which makes effortful activity seem relatively easier. Since you have already endured something really unpleasant, the effort associated with any goal-directed activity seems relatively smaller than it otherwise would—you have a higher level of baseline motivation for the rest of the day.
Dip in the sea
A major part of the purpose behind a dip in the sea is, like the static hip stretching, to build willpower by doing something I do not want to do. In the winter, it differs from hip stretching in its intensity and thereby in the willpower it requires to follow through. I expect that it builds more willpower than the static stretching, since it is such a big hurdle to overcome each morning.
Like enduring the pain of static stretching, the “pain” of the cold water boosts motivation for the rest of the day. This effect is also stronger than for the stretching. Research indicates significant increases in dopaminergic activity for hours after cold exposure.
Finally, a dip in the sea grounds me and gives me some morning sun in the face and on the body (the latter not in the winter).
The effect of electricity on health is controversial, but I believe there is enough evidence to pay heed to the idea that grounding—resetting your electrical charge by connecting your skin with the earth—is beneficial. Going into the sea is, probably, the most potent form of resetting that charge—even more effective than classic grounding whereby you walk barefoot on the grass.
The benefits of morning sun in the eyes and on body have become widely recognised and are now almost fully mainstream.
Morning sun in the eyes wakes you up because the bright light—much brighter than artificial light sources—suppresses melatonin production suddenly and strongly. This, in turn, anchors your circadian rhythm, which improves your ability to fall asleep at night and improves the quality of your sleep as well as a ton of health-related biomarkers.
Morning sun on the body gives you red light at the time of day where its effect is the greatest. Mitochondria are light-sensitive and benefit from (probably even need) long wavelength light (red, near-infrared, infrared). They respond more strongly to it in the morning than later in the day. Morning sun on the body therefore boosts systemic energy production which supports the body’s intrinsic ability to repair and heal—the foundation of health—and gives a subjective experience of higher energy levels.
Meditation
The benefits of meditation are numerous and well-documented. Most of them are downstream consequences of an expanded awareness and presence in the moment. As a conscious, thinking being with the capacity for reason and deliberation, the necessary precondition for us using our mental faculty is that we are aware and present in the moment. The opposite of this is to be a slave of thoughts and emotions like a child or an animal. When meditating, you effectively train your ability to be an aware adult human being.
Visible downstream benefits of meditation are: Greater self-control and discipline, higher baseline happiness, lower impulsivity, lower fear, greater pain tolerance, greater patience, and so on. These adaptations are clearly reflected by neurological changes: The pre-frontal cortex grows (associated with reason and top-down control) and the amygdala shrinks (associated with fear).
Red light therapy
I have already noted the benefits of red light therapy under the morning dip-header. (Improved mitochondrial function -> better overall health and energy level). During the summer, the dip itself may offer red light in meaningful amounts. The rest of the year, however, supplementation is warranted. I combine read light therapy with meditation to kill two birds with one stone.
Planning the day
I wrote an entire blog post about the benefits of planning the day in a high level of detail. The post refers exactly to this part of my daily routine, and I suggest you read the original: https://schaiffel.bearblog.dev/making-a-detailed-plan-for-the-day/
The high-level summary is this: A plan offers a pre-determined default course of action. This reduces the need for making decisions throughout the day, which allows one to keep momentum by staying in a mindset of pure execution (as opposed to a planning-mindset). This, in turn, allows one to get more done and to build the discipline of following through on a plan since one procrastinates less when one has a clear plan that makes the cost of procrastination more viscerally felt.
The Order
I start with stretching to build a bridge between being asleep and awake. Planning and meditation as the very first things, I do not like. My mind needs a bit of time to warm up and prepare. A dip in the sea is possible as a first thing, and I have done this for a while, but it is also a big hurdle to overcome, and building up some momentum helps. Thus, stretching, which is easy to get started with and wakes you up by easing into unpleasant sensations, seems the perfect thing to do first thin in the morning.
Having gone through some discomfort, getting into the sea also seems less challenging. It is a smaller increase in discomfort than had I tried to do it first thing after getting out of bed. This is part of the reason why I put the dip in the sea second. Another part is that it really wakes you up. It thereby primes me well for the next activities that require a certain level of mental focus. Putting it second also means I get it over with fairly early in the morning. I would not want to have it looming in the back of my mind for a full hour. The fifteen minutes while I stretch is enough to motivate me to do it and not so much that it overwhelms.
I meditate before I plan the day, because I want to go straight from the planning session into execution. Right after my plan for the day is done, I have the highest level of motivation I will ever achieve. I feel urgency and am ready to switch to an execution mindset to get things done. Pausing at this point to meditate would completely destroy my momentum, which I would need to build up again afterwards.
Additionally, the meditation calms my mind and improves my presence. This possibly potentiates the following planning session. I am better connected with myself and reality. I hope this contributes marginally to the quality of my plans.
In summary, the order of these four components contributes to adherence and, to the extent possible, amplifies each other. The routine itself contributes to basic health, motivation, and discipline—for the rest of that day and for the long term.