Here is a method that is helping creatives to start the day off right
Less phone, more sleep
Most of us are still sleeping with their smartphones on their nightstands.
First thing in the morning: checking for notifications, reading messages, scrolling social feeds.
Even if you are not doing this on your smartphone, chances are you are using the TV or newspaper. After all, it’s important to catch up on what happened in the world in the last hours, when you have been asleep.
I catch myself sometimes just awake, barely out of the dream, fumbling for my smartphone, with one eye blinking at the much-too-bright screen.
Why are we doing this to ourselves?
The first thing we do when we go straight online is exposing ourselves to other people’s ideas and lives.
We read and see things that happen in the world. Maybe we even get a bit angry at a politician’s actions, some sports team decisions, some injustice happening far, far away. On Instagram, we see friends and acquaintances traveling to exotic locations, while we are at home, getting up to face the grind.
I’m exaggerating on purpose, but just a little bit.
The problem: if we really want to start our day, our live with the things that matter, we need to get away from the screen in the morning. What is so important about other people’s lives and ideas that it can’t wait until a bit later when we are fully awake?
Especially when we are trying to do creative work, listening to our own ideas and thoughts, reflecting upon the dreams, finding answers in our subconscious can be much more rewarding than looking at others.
I propose you try these steps to start off with more energy and vigor in the morning:
1. On the previous evening, put your smartphone somewhere you can’t reach it from the bed. Turn on airplane mode, switch off vibrations. There are some theories about how it is easier to sleep if you don’t expose yourself to the blue light of the device 30 minutes before bed, so it might help additionally.
2. If you are using your device for your alarm in the morning, it’s not unlikely that you will start browsing/ checking notifications when you switch off the alarm. Consider getting a separate alarm clock.
3. Take your time to wake up fully. If you are interested, try meditating, mindfulness and/ or light exercise. It can also help to keep some pen and paper next to your bed. Are there things you need to do, things that came to you in your sleep, ideas, and thoughts? Write them down. This is your time.
4. Keep newspapers, TV and social media away until you are fully awake and ready to start the day. If you plan to do some creative work like blogging, creative writing, drawing, etc., don’t let those things interfere with your creativity. They will influence you and worse, they might even block you. Other people’s ideas and creations will still be there later. Give yourself space to create. Then come back to others.
In my other article, I talked about “clearing the way”. The opposite also holds true: if you want to break bad habits, make it harder for you to go back to them. Putting the phone completely away from bed might be a way: you’d have to get up first and find it. You could, for instance, uninstall the Facebook app and only access it from the browser, not keeping the login. Then, instead of one click to open the app, you have to open the browser, type the address and log in — many more steps to go, which makes it less likely to do it routinely.
Let me know if you notice a change of quality in your work when you are listening to yourself in the mornings.
Thanks for reading!
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