On Structured Mornings...
and hitting the ground running
After a long slide down into comfortable daily starts I’ve recently recommitted to getting my most important things done first thing in the mornings.
I’ve always been an early riser - 5am is my jam, even more so when the days are longer. As much as I like the deeper sleep that blackout curtains can bring, my body likes to wake up with the gradual pre-dawn light. Maybe it’s my seafaring ancestors but my mornings are more attuned to nautical twilight than civilian twilight. I’ve done my share of early morning walks when camping, up with the birds and the dew before the sun can burn my head.
When Minette and I had our first house in Redding, CA I had a home gym and it was easy to start the day with my coffee, watching SportsCenter and lifting. Once we landed in the Dallas area and had kids we both always saw that 5am wakeup as “our time” and I would either use it for running or time at the gym. I was often in marathon training in the summers: heading out at zero dark thirty meant I had a chance of the temperature dipping below 80DegF. It’s andrenaline-filling to meet a skunk on a dark trail at the beginning of a long run.
Our years in Southern California brought lots of Ironman training with no shortage of early morning workouts, but they weren’t a habit. The kids were past needing a lot of morning attention, I was mostly working at home with my own schedule and no alarm waking me up, my attention often went to social media, and Minette and I spent a lot of time walking together. My early mornings slid into a comfortable onramp to the rest of the day. I wouldn’t give up the walks for the world - we worked through a lot of personal, creative, and business stuff on them - but I did use them as an excuse to push workouts and a morning routine down the ladder.
As it turns out, the lack of an early morning routine for me has as many negative knock-on effects as the presence of an early morning routine has positive ones. The comfortable onramp merges into overwhelm, indecision about tasks, more time wasted on social media, and generally an environment of distraction and sloth (see The Great Stuckedness). The day fades away partly because I never really got my brain into action, partly because I’ve made it OK to just doomscroll through twitter, and partly because I feel guilty about not doing the important things.
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. If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right. And, if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made—that you made—and a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. If you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.
— Admiral William H McCraven, “Make Your Bed: Little Things That Can Change Your Life...And Maybe the World”
I always loved this quote from Admiral McCraven but I have to assume that as a military man his mornings also always included an hour of PT (Physical Training) right away along with other highly regimented activities. Having a structured start to the day that includes a wakeup alarm, exercise, essay writing, non-fiction reading - and making the bed - not only makes me feel better for the rest of the day, it ensures that the important things do get done. It’s not so much that it reinforces “the fact that little things in life matter”, rather that there is more mental space for other tasks knowing that I’ve checked off the big ones.
I know what you’re thinking - “duh, Brad, everyone knows that”. Yes it’s obvious, but saying “I’ll get up early and do stuff” is quite a bit different than the discipline to do it every morning. That’s what I’m after, that routine that I just have to have. There’s a term in running, “streaker” - no, not that kind - for people that never miss a day. It’s the same concept as Seinfeld’s “Never Break the Chain”. The longest running streaks are up over 50 years. I’ve always been attracted to it because of the discipline it shows: there is quite a bit of truth in the title of Jocko Willink’s book: “Discipline Equals Freedom”. Rain or shine, hungover or rested, sick or full of energy, streakers just put in the miles.
The 5am alarm on my iphone is called “Do it do it do it”. I think my body and mind understand innately what it means to get up and do the work. For once I’m listening to what they are saying.