My wife and I have been locked inside our home for the past 2 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic here in Spain. Other than quick trips to the market to resupply every 15 days, we haven’t left the house at all.
I’m not saying that this is too different from what my normal routine pre-corona was because it isn’t. Other than the occasional day out working at a co-working space nearby, most of my days were spent home.
However, it’s in our human nature (I guess, no scientific backing here) that we only start to miss things when we are no longer able to do them. And going outside definitively falls into that category, at least for me.
The first month was alright, to be honest. Nothing to complain. The second month started to get a bit harder… We started to lose track of weekdays, going to bed super late, and getting up at noon.
Although I still managed to be productive (and had actually seen an increase in productivity), this started to bother me. Something had to be done.
The idea
I was reading my daily Medium digest when I stumbled upon this post by Keenan Eriksson. Keenan defines himself as a biohacker. In his words, “someone who uses biology and science to optimize mind and body“.
Some of the elements of his post seemed very reasonable, especially his morning routine. I thought it would be a good idea to give that a go.
Well, this isn’t my first time trying to implement a somewhat rigid morning routine. I failed miserably numerous times in the past.
The routine
In the end, I came up with a slightly modified version of the morning routine:
- Wake up every day at 7 am – hard to do at the moment, but having something like Sleep Cycle helps a lot.
- 15 minutes of stretching – no secret here, just your plain old stretching routine.
- 30 minutes of coffee and reading – reading is something I love to do but wasn’t finding time to do recently. Crossing this right after waking up and before doing anything else seems like a good way to finish at least a few pages every day.
- 15-20 minutes of meditation – as mentioned by Keenan, it can be hard to get 15 minutes of meditation done at first, so it might help to start slow. Guided meditation apps such as Calm and Headspace help a lot.
- 15 minutes of exercise – in the current circumstances of life, for me this consists of going up and down the stairs for 15 minutes (at least for now).
- A cold shower – the last step to get ready for a very productive day.
- Blogging – This post is actually part of this exercise!
I’m very happy I managed to pull this off for today and I’ll report back after a week of doing this.
Now that I’m done writing the post (the last item on the morning routine), I’m ready to a good session of deep work!
Do you have any morning rituals? How have they impacted your everyday life?
Kind regards,
Arindo,