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.