Morning Routine

Brief chat with old friend on our morning routines.  Having one frames the rest of the day, maybe keeps people productive in retirement.  His seemed simpler than mine.  He gets up at a time when working people are already at work.  He makes coffee in a large French press, sips it from a double sized mug as he reads his subscriptions to the NY Times and Wall Street Journal.  Then we chatted about what we think of his two journals and a few other pundits whose thoughts we both seek out.

My routine is more involved.  Ideally, which does not always materialize, I make my best effort to arise at 7AM, later than in my working years but before people other than nurses and baristas are already toiling away.  My next destination is dental hygiene.  Then coffee.  Mine comes from a k-cup, usually selected from among three varieties, with the 8 oz option selected on the Keurig Mini-Express.  While brewing, retrieve the daily local paper for my wife to read when she gets up, placing it right outside our front door.  Then some dishes left over from the previous day.  I tend to do cups first.  On some days, I am scheduled to check on the indoor herbs which grow in an Aerogarden and three Chia pots, as well as a new Bonsai starter.  I keep a bottle of water next to them, sometimes having to refill the bottle before I go upstairs to My Space with the newly brewed coffee.

On Sundays I plan my week while sipping coffee.  On the other days, I planned my day the night before, so I review it.  My medicines are filled in their weekly containers every Sunday.  I take out the day's pills, one set of four, another of two large OTC tablets, and swallow them with coffee.  

Next I check my messages:  email, FB, Reddit, X.  Never an overwhelming number.  Then I start, and often finish, and entry in furrydoc.blogspot.com and begin the daily crosswords, where I usually do five.  More often than not, I return to the kitchen for a second cup of coffee, either a different variet of k-cup or bagged ground coffee of good quality in a k-cup adapter, splashed with generic creamer.  Back to My Space.

My rate limiting step seems to be the daily treadmill sessions, two days on, one day off, with a three day recovery at the end of each month.  I target 8:15AM for this, and afford it a priority appointment with myself.  Once completed, I am ready to get dressed and declare the morning routine successful.

There are some specified mornings as well.  Shabbos is a time to look at what I have done and fallen short of doing.  Sunday I plan the ensuing week.  I remove shabbos dinner from the freezer Thursday mornings.  On Sundays I fill out my appointment list on a whiteboard so that my wife can see when I need to be away from home.  So even the routine has its variants, but enough is fixed as to be a framework that keeps me accomplished when morning has passed.

Morning Routine

Everyone's day has to start somewhere.  Clocks were reset a few days ago to keep the onset of daylight in the vicinity of most people's alarm clock settings at the expense of early evening darkness.  People are used to remaining active for at least a few hours after nightfall though less internally programmed to arise before dawn.  And as visitors to airports figure out, it is always Happy Hour somewhere on earth, keeping their pubs occupied irrespective of local time.

My day does not really start with an alarm clock as much as an inner sense that I ought to get up.  I have made attempts at fixed wake and sleep times, deferring to the Sleep Hygiene guidance of experts but my internal programming never quite resets as the gurus predict it would.  So I make a commitment to myself each morning to limit my dawn awake time in bed to a clock setting, 7-ish most mornings, and rarely betray that personal commitment.  

Productivity experts, and I'm a sucker for experts, looking mostly in reverse at people who they identify as successful, then teasing out what they find in common about them, largely conclude that people who achieve notable things most days in their daily box of daylight have some predictability to how they start.  Follow them and you will become like them is probably a fallacy, but the findings seem to give an advantage to those who begin each day with some predictable activities.  So my day begins with the electric toothbrush and a floss placker. On Mondays I step on the scale.  Then downstairs to my Keurig -Express, selecting a porcelain cup from my collection and a pod from a rotating rack that usually holds four choices.  Brew 8 oz.  While the water makes its way from the reservoir to heating element, through the grounds, into the cup, I wash a few dishes left over from the night before.  I check the progress of plants in the Aerogarden and chia pots that sit in the living room.  On Mondays I take the yellow tape measure that dangles near my downstairs desk to record my waist circumference, then head outdoors in nightclothes irrespective of weather to transport the daily newspaper from the end of the driveway to the front door where my wife can take it inside for reading, which is essential to her morning routine.  And if the recycling box needs to be emptied into the biweekly recycling bin, I do that at the same outing.

Coffee in hand, it's upstairs to my desk in My Space.  Since my day was outlined the night before, another common habit of successful people, I review it.  Take the morning pills from the daily pill case set out every Sunday, wash down with coffee.  There are opinions to wash amlodipine with a different liquid but my serial BP's have been therapeutic with the way I do it now.  Laptop on.  Messages next:  email, FB, Twitter, Reddit has been my usual sequence.  Then on Monday and Tuesday do The Atlantic Crossword, the only days within my capacity.  Next a blog entry.  Sometimes I can do this in one sitting, sometimes not.  But I always select a theme for the entry and usually begin before moving on to the Washington Post crossword puzzle.  At 8:15AM on dates not divisible by three, I return downstairs for a treadmill session, the duration and speed determined before I start.  Knee and ankle braces to the right joints, running shoes that I keep next to the lounge chair, then exercise with a countdown clock.  It feels good to complete it each time.  Remove shoes and braces.  Usually more coffee, then back upstairs to crosswords or blog or maybe delay slightly to do more dishes.  

That's about two hours.  I've still not gotten dressed, still not had anything seriously caloric.  But several days a week, I need to depart the house for an OLLI class or shabbos services so I close the Morning Routine box, get dressed, and start the parts of my Daily Task Lists that make most days unique in their own way.

Morning Routines

My cell phone's suggested reads the past few days have included links to articles on Morning Routines that lead to accomplished days.  I could use some accomplished days.  Some come from psychologists or other academics who study this.  Others are summaries from already successful people who convey their morning activities to admiring interviewers.  Expanding to a Google Search, oodles of these routines appear.  If there are a lot of solutions, probably none of them are any good.

A few suggestions appear repetitively, some of which I do, some I haven't.  Most recommend getting up a little earlier than what your body would do on its own and avoid the snooze alarm.  They all recommend a big glass of water before any coffee.  Going outside appears on a lot of these lists.  As does having a plan for the day composed the previous night.

Tried drinking the water.  Not successful.  Just made a k-cup of Martinson's coffee.  Went outside to retrieve the newspaper from the driveway.  Out of bed time has always been contentious.  My sleep tracker has helped.  When the music comes on I am up.  While I set my wrist alarm for 6:30AM, my internal chemistry puts me asleep at that time after some wakefulness the previous hour.  I suppose I could just do it and form a new habit, which I have done before, but the sleep tracker only delays that by about fifteen minutes and I arise.  Dental hygiene next.  Then downstairs to make coffee, retrieve newspaper so my wife does not have to, wash dishes which has a way of relaxing me, and add water to the chia herb pots if they seem dry.  When my smartphone is at the bedside I check email, otherwise I wait until in My Space with coffee and laptop.  Medicines to the left of the laptop.  Daily activity list to the right.  Then I'm ready to go.  Start with blog entry.  Then decide the must-do's and what would get procrastinated in the absence of targeted focus.

And some days turn out productively gratifying, while others disappoint.  My guess is that these experts are a bit like self-appointed financial gurus who really don't beat the market.  And what works for a CEO may not be transferable to me.

Getting Up Early

Off Topic, maybe.

I'm now three months into retirement, planned for five years, financially secure my adviser tells me.  I find it hard, indeed unfathomable, to start a workday at 7:30AM when I would typically leave home and go straight through to 6:30PM when I would get home.  My day has become short bursts of activity with lulls or diversions, though some are productive.  That's not to say I haven't done worthwhile things.  I've been to Europe for the first time.  I exercise on schedule, interrupted by days of quadratus lumborum pain.  My diet is better but my waist circumfrence and weight have not changed in the two years I have kept records.  Each day I have a list of more things than I can do, but focus on two or three, sometimes substantive like decluttering the study to be my reclusive space, more often trivial like doing the laundry. 

I have a few time restrictions that have served me well.  No food from 8PM to 6AM based on a study that showed better weight control by doing this irrespective of what is eaten at the other times and no internet from 11PM to 5:30AM, originally intended to sleep better but not terribly successful at that, though with other merits to justify keeping the restrictions going.

Today I woke up in the middle of the night, tried to return to sleep, almost did and arose at 6:30.  Thought about going to a new local diner for breakfast, but opted for coffee at home via K-cups instead.  I did the rest of fleishig dishes, cold laundry, worked on Thanksgiving dinner, which is one of my annual projects, and in general feel more prepared for the rest of the day.  I've taken my weekly weight and waist measurements.  Uncertain on treadmill as I am still achy.  Limited Facebook and email which are my time sinks. 

I always knew I was a morning person.