Join our morning routine challenge!

Many people believe that having a morning routine has an immense positive impact on your day. Not only does a morning routine create positive momentum, but also starts your day with self care, self love, vision, and direction.

Therefore, here at Sidekick, we decided to embark on a morning routine challenge.

For the next few months, we’re going to try 4 morning routines of 4 very different, but highly successful people. We’ll try each routine for 15 days and track how we feel and how productive we are.

Our 4 morning routines

Tim Cook — Apple CEO

Tim Cook is the CEO of one of the most valuable companies in the world — Apple Inc.

Tim Cook starts his morning every day at 3:45 am. The first thing he does is work for an hour. Generally, he focuses on emails from customers and external users — what he feels is the most important task.

After that, he goes to an undisclosed gym and works out for an hour. He eats breakfast, then heads to a cafe for another hour of work — generally, emails.

And then, around 7AM, Tim heads to Apple for the rest of his work day.

Robin Sharma — Canadian Writer

Robin Sharma is a Canadian writer well known for his book, “The 5 AM Club.” Like the book suggests, Robin Sharma starts his day at 5AM.

The first hour of his day holds a 20/20/20 rule in which that first hour nurtures what he calls “the 4 interior empires.” The 4 interior empires consist of E1, mindset (psychology), E2, heartset (emotionality), E3, healthset (physicality), and E4, soulset (spirituality).

After waking up at 5Am, Robin enters the first 20 minutes: move. This consists of intense exercise, sweating really hard, hydrating, and breathing deeply. This cleanses your cortisol, increases your dopamine, serotonin, and metabolism — all very sciency words to say that moving in the first 20 minutes will do wonders for your body and life.

After that, Robin enters the second 20 minutes: reflect. This consists of journaling, meditating, planning, and praying. These 20 minutes are supposed to increase your gratitude, serenity, and happiness — ultimately, increasing your positivity and fostering a richer life.

And finally, Robin enters the third 20 minutes: grow. Here, he reads books, consumes audiobooks or podcasts, or just studies something online. The idea here is to deepen your knowledge and widen your acumen.

Andy Puddicombe — Monk and Entrepreneur

Andy Puddicombe is well known for his teachings of mindfulness and as the co-founder of the meditation app, Headspace.

Andy’s morning focuses on nurturing his body through exercise and nurturing his mind and soul through meditation.

He wakes up before 5, usually around 4:30 AM. The first thing he does is be thankful that he woke up. Then he does 1 hour of cardio. After showering, he engages in some stretching. After that, given the opportunities of the day, he meditates for 30 minutes. Then he eats a vegan breakfast, and then off to work.

Benjamin Franklin — Founding Father

Our final morning routine is that of Benjamin Franklin, a founding father of the United States. Published in his autobiography, Benjamin Franklin’s morning routine spanned from 5AM to 8AM.

Upon waking up at 5 AM, he asked himself, “What good shall I do this day?” — and after that a quick wash. Then, Benjamin Franklin addressed the Powerful Goodness, which is another way of saying prayer or reflection.

Next, he contrived the day’s business and took the resolution of the day. Basically, this means he planned his day and identified his daily goal.

Then, Benjamin Franklin prosecuted the present study — studying something that was often unrelated to the rest of his work. This might have consisted of reading a new book or learning a new language.

And finally, he ate his breakfast and then got to work.

Summary

Tracking our progress

We’ll be tracking our progress with both an emotion tracker and a productivity tracker. If you’re joining in our challenge, feel free to duplicate this template.

The emotion tracker will be focused on tracking our happiness, stress, and productivity levels.

We’ll be using Sidekick every day for the basis of our productivity tracker. The productivity tracker will be focused on tracking the number and quality of deep work sessions we complete, deep work hours we complete, and the number of goals accomplished.

If you think this sounds fun, please join our challenge! Tweet as @thesidekickapp. We’d be so happy to hear your thoughts and hear about your experience.

We’ll be sharing our progress afterwards so stay tuned for another blog and video.