10X Your Life: The Magnificent Morning Launch Sequence
Snake-oil salesmen’s latest productivity myth
These days everyone is a life coach with a morning routine to sell. Most of them are eager young pups getting ahead of themselves. The others are charlatans. Let me show you how to win the day before it’s even started.
I used to be like you: full of excuses. I was 27 and after selling just three startups and taking a fourth to an unremarkable IPO I felt like a failure. Plus I’d wasted two years on a Harvard MBA and I hadn’t won an ultramarathon since my teens. I needed to get my life back on track, and I knew that my morning routine was derailing me from the moment I woke up and grabbed my phone to record my resting heart rate. Yet it was only after micro-dosing ayahuasca (see my book How To Manage Your Time Like a Shaman) that I found a phrase that changed my life: “Your life is a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Four months later and I have tripled my income, cut my email processing to 21 minutes a day and reversed my male pattern baldness. I actually have too much hair! I also realised my long-cherished dream to help millions of people by campaigning with my friends at Uber to repeal antiquated taxi regulation in Sierra Leone.
It was while teaching my sons how to freedive for pearls in Bora Bora last week that I realised life is good, and it’s all down to the Magnificent Morning Launch Sequence (download my free ebook here).
Let me show you what a typical a.m. on the ranch looks like, and how it helped me 10X my productivity, 4X my athletic performance and 1.5X my healthy sperm count. Implement this Launch Sequence and you’ll soon be living the life you always dreamed of.
I’m woken by Sleep Cycle between 4.30 and 4.50 at the optimum moment for Maximum Morning Magnificence (™ pending). I immediately consume 0.65 litres iced water with freshly-squeezed kumquat juice, 1.5 tsp pink Himalayan rock salts plus an L-thiamine supplement. This delicious drink rehydrates me and restores optimum alkalinity (crucial for deep work such as coding) while reducing oracular inflammation and promoting intestinal elasticity. It also corrects the hormonal imbalances caused by our frequent exposure to radiation-belching wifi routers (read my article Technology’s Secret War On Your Testicles). Five minutes.
Like my friend Seth Godin, I love the ritual of making world-class espresso but I don’t consume caffeine. I have a vintage Italian machine (see below) which is my pride and joy. Once I have mindfully prepared the coffee, I put it in a cardboard cup, add frothed milk and seal it. I usually give it to a homeless person on my way to my Bojutso class in the evening. It’s so important to give: it creates abundance in your life and that of those around you (see my article Seven Giving Tactics for Maximum ROI). 12 minutes.
The third step in the #MMLS is meditation. I am a recent convert – I always wanted to do it but couldn’t find a way in. Luckily there are now apps for people like me. I use Headspace: as an early investor I get extra satisfaction from knowing that I’m boosting my bank balance with every breath. This is the kind of value doubling that will compound into Magnificent (Morning) Returns (see my article Meditation For VCs). 15 minutes.
My next habit is triggered by the laptop I left out overnight. Triggers are so important if you want to reduce cognitive load – and who doesn’t? Mine is down to about 23%. Time for the highlight of my Launch Sequence: the Gratitude and Affirmations habits. I fire up the family Slack team and post 3–5 things in our #gratitude channel. This way my thankfulness spreads throughout my family giving a respectable ROI. Then I step outside to say my affirmations aloud. Affirmations not only give you the confidence to succeed, they actually manifest that success by rewiring your subconscious mind. After months of application of the 80–20 rule, I can reveal the 20% of affirmations that net 80% of the positive gains. A classic win for #MagnificentMornings (find out what they are by downloading my free ebook here). 10 minutes.
It’s around 5.30am and if you’re like I used to be, you’re itching to process emails! But we are here to hack that primitive pre-frontal cortex of yours and flex the amygdala (the wealth-creating part of your brain). As we joked at my third start-up, “a.m. email is an anagram of ‘I am lame’”. If you want the all-day benefits of 2.75X-ing your cerebro-vascularity, you need to get your ass into action! By that I mean exercising.
I do 30 minutes of CrossFit while listening to motivational speeches or some pumped music like Eminem, a short run (8–12 miles) and a 15 minute inverted cool down. I’ll usually just hang upside down from a pull-up bar. This promotes spinal elongation and oxidates the nucleotides while I prepare my triple-node Action Plan for the day. (Watch my TEDX talk Do Not “To-Do” – The Un-List-Making Revolution). 85 minutes.
7.30a.m. Myofascial release and a cold shower are essential for Morning Magnificence. You might hate them at first, but that just proves that you are weak and (worse) average. Just get a foam roller and a yoga mat, and dig in to that ITB band. Thank me later. Meanwhile my wife preps the kids for home school. Just before class we sit holding hands and discuss our motivations and financial goals for the day. Then I hop on my bike for my 40 mile commute to the coworking hub-share space I cofounded. I’ll usually have queued up around 60 one-page audio summaries of timeless books on Blinkist for my journey. I have eclectic taste and it could be anything from Malcolm Gladwell to Clay Shirky. By the time I get to work I can joke that I have accumulated approximately 60km and 60KT (Key Takeaways). I like to share a few crucial insights with the team during our standing meeting – not only do I spread the benefits of my reading but by teaching others I consolidate my knowledge. Another double-value proposition that’s so easy to integrate into your life (#MMSL). One of my colleagues makes Bulletproof Coffee for the whole company (I have a Lazy Tibetan – decaf with yak butter). Then I am ready to start work for the day. Launch Sequence complete and ready for Terminal Innovation Velocity.
And that is how I win the day before it’s even started with 10X Miraculous Morning Magnificence. It’s easy and anyone can do it. But be warned: being happy, fit and wealthy might take some getting used to. Life is a self-fulfilling prophecy. What kind of prophet (profit) will you make?
