Morning Routine Starts with the Night Before
Over the past 10 or so years I’ve learned that my most productive, most creative, and most energetic time of the day is between 4am and 10am. I like to break it down even further than as well. Of those 6 hours, my most productive time is between 4am and 7am while the remaining 3 hours I find myself to be the most “present” with my family and the most likely to get a workout in. Since being with my family, being healthy, and growing my business are my top 3 priorities in life, I take my mornings seriously… and I love them.
This morning infatuation has become a sort of calling card for me (and Eric too) since our team and friends get most replies and notifications from us before 6am. For new hires this can be a shocker the first few weeks. People often ask why or how we get so up early and I try my best to explain that it’s really not that hard, I just set my alarm and get up. But it never seems to resonate, and those who attempt to get up early seem to fall back into “sleeping in” quite easily.
This week I was listening to a podcast where the interviewer asked about the morning routines of the interviewee and the first thing he said was “the morning routine starts with the night before.” BOOM! Brilliance in one sentence. This was my missing sentence from my explanation about how I get up early. In order for me to wake up at 4am and be as productive and creative as I love to be, I need to have a restful night of sleep and get in at least 7–8 hours of sleep. If you do the math, that means I have to be in bed by 8pm-9pm which sounds crazy to most people (especially younger, single people). For my life for quite some time this early bed time works fine and I just see it as “trading hours”. I give up the hours at night in order to capture more hours the next morning.
In order to get restful sleep and get to bed early, I’m forced to say no to lots of social events. To me, very few evening activities ‘out’ benefit my morning hours. Social outings, or late-night TV/surfing the Internet… what my typical evenings would entail otherwise… don’t hold a candle to my morning bliss. When I realized this trade was a no brainer I became obsessive about protecting my time. I’m still not perfect at it but I consciously work on it. For example, one of my best friends and I traded doing monthly dinners at 7pm (which used to crush my next morning) to instead catching up on weekly hour long runs.
As I said in the blog I referenced, this is all starts with being self aware of what’s most important to you and for me that’s growing my business, being present with family, and staying healthy. If my priority were to have the most successful night club, my schedule would have to be different, but no matter what the morning routine starts with night before. If you want to try the early morning bliss with us, get into bed early! It may change your world as it has for me.
