Highly Productive People Have a Ritualistic Morning Routine
That begins the night before.
If you listen to The Tim Ferriss Show, you know a typical question asked of his high performing guests is, “what is your morning routine?” And 95% of the time, his guests give a detailed description of how they start their days with structured ritual.
Tim Ferriss makes his bed each morning to kick off his routine. Dr. Weil sleeps with his two dogs, and the female dog licks his face each morning, waking him at 4:00 am, and then he starts his meditation practice. Oprah doesn’t use an alarm clock to wake up. Upon waking, Julia Cameron writes out three pages in longhand, which she coined as Morning Pages. Morning Pages, which first appeared in The Artist’s Way, has inspired writers since its publication in 1992.
I haven’t listened to the Brené Brown episode yet, but I’m sure as a lover of research, she must implement some system into her morning ritual.
Most writers who generate the amount of quality content, as the writers mentioned above, have some morning routine which starts the night before.
I have also noticed that many of these high performing influencers — the mentors I aspire to emulate — are writers. They may not have started as writers, but they ended up as writers, often, with at least five books each to their names.
We all have the same amount of time
The commonality between us and those at the top, is we all have the same amount of time.
Time is the leveling playing field.
Most high-performance influencers and authors have a team working for them who add to their overall productivity, but most surely didn’t start with a team of people working for them.
We all have the same 24 hours per day to get things done, and some people use this limited thing called “time” better than others. They produce more by having a system in place to facilitate their ability to control their time with as little effort as possible.
Being prolific starts with a system that allows you to focus concerted effort on the things you value as your essentials.
I value writing; therefore, writing is my foremost essential and gets most of my attention the first thing in the morning.
Social media — the ultimate time suck
Another common practice among prolific influencers is they do not go on social media to scroll.
To work, yes. To scroll, no.
When they do log onto social, they do so on their terms, meaning, they dictate when they allow social, or other people (email) to eat away their time.
I recently heard Tom Bilyeu speak at a conference.
Bilyeu is the co-founder of Quest Nutrition, the second-fastest-growing private company in North America. He rarely deviates from his morning routine, which starts the night before when he goes to sleep at 9:00 pm with religious vigor, as I do (despite the playful teasing I withstand from my child and partner), and he follows the same morning routine each day.
The intentional act of going to bed at 9:00 pm is the start of his morning routine, an integral part of it.
After waking, meditation, and working out, he then works on his “Important Things List” — that he made the night before — for a good six to seven hours. Only then does Bilyeu log on to social, and only then will he allow social media or email or other people who work for him to dictate his time.
Focus plus consistency leads to impact
The objective is to control this non-renewable resource called time, so you can allocate it to the things you most want to be spending time doing — your essentials.
For me, right now, it’s writing and creating a profitable online business. Everything else is getting very little attention, and that’s OK.
With forethought and planning, my actions, and what I choose to spend my 24 hours on is deliberate and intentional.
Apply your hard work to the tasks you decide are important — determined by self-awareness and forethought. Make your work intentional, and you will see results.
A thumb workout
The average Facebook user is scrolling on Facebook for an average of 30 minutes per day. Per year this equates to 22 eight-hour workdays.
Besides your thumb getting a workout, that is a lot of wasted time.
If you consume less, you have more time to do that which you deem essential, which adds value to your life.
Mindlessly scrolling on Facebook because you are scared of doing “the thing” you most want to do, will get you nowhere in your business or your writing.
You are either focused, or you are “consuming.”
The average person consumes 4 hours of TV per day. That is 13 years in front of the TV.
Your success in anything — writing, business, learning to play the guitar, financial freedom — anything of value is 30 minutes a day away by spending less time on social media and consumption of non-essentials.
Every day ask yourself, “where am I going?” and “what are my values?”
Because what you focus on is what you build and what you attract.
Put focused attention on what matters. Start by creating a morning routine you can stick to that propels you towards accomplishing your goals every 24 hours.
Each day you are given is a gift.
Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering Type A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
