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You are reading: Best morning routine books
Before we start the festivities, I wanted to thank everyone for helping my first book become a wall street journal bestseller. to check it out, click here.
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You are reading: Best morning routine books
eating the same oatmeal every morning as bill gates will not make you a billionaire. And even if the Dalai Lama started each day with a double bourbon and unfiltered Marlboros, that doesn’t mean it’s going to be his personal path to eternal wisdom.
We know that the morning is a special time. research shows that your mood when you wake up affects how you feel throughout the day and how productive you are. and we know that rituals are powerful. If used correctly, they have been shown to increase happiness, reduce procrastination, and increase confidence and performance.
so, what is the best morning ritual for you? I’ll be honest…
I have no idea.
I mean, really, how the hell would I do it? (We don’t go out much. You haven’t invited me in weeks.) there are some things that work well for most people. I’ve written about general morning routines for happiness, productivity, and wisdom.
but the problem here is that we all have different goals, different moods and different idiosyncrasies which can drastically affect the impact any system will have. so this suit here needs to be tailored. Instead of giving you ready-made answers, what follows will be more like a DIY kit.
so where do we start? big picture. what is the purpose of a morning ritual?
1) what the most successful people do before breakfast
Laura Vanderkam interviewed a lot of successful people asking the question: what should you really be doing during your morning ritual? The answer is going to sound a little crazy at first…
You should be doing things that don’t need to happen today. or any particular day.
Can you postpone today’s training and still stay fit? of course. If you don’t see your family today, will your relationships suddenly burn? No. do you have to make your big plans for the future at 5 p.m. m.? of course not.
None of these things are urgent, but they are all vital to living the best life possible. but because they don’t have to be done now, they often never get done.
laura says the best morning rituals are about nurturing; nourish one of the three fundamental areas of life:
- nurture your career: make long-term plans. construction skills. look beyond today’s tasks.
- nurture your relationships: make plans for your family. hug your family.
- take care of yourself: exercise. meditation. get better reading awesome posts on that blog with the unpronounceable url.
What do I like about this book? (how nice of you to ask). Laura not only provides a clear approach to what a morning ritual should do, she also provides 5 steps for implementation. she explains how to get it up and running and how to make sure it evolves with you.
check it out here.
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OK, we’ve got the 10,000 foot view. but we need a place to start. what will this beast actually look like and what will it entail? To meet this challenge, we’re going to use the same proven technique that got me into an ivy league college…
Copy the answers of the smartest kid in the class.
Seriously, let’s look at the specific routines of some very successful people…
2) my morning routine
Spall and Xander talked to everyone from military generals to Olympic athletes to the head of Pixar. They provide not only the routines of each but also a clear breakdown of the consistent trends they found in their 64 interviews.
As the authors put it: “What we discovered as we dug deeper into the process of interviewing people about their morning routines is that hardly any of the world’s best and brightest leave their mornings to chance.”
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What do I really like about this book? reading the perfect “platonic form” versions of a morning ritual is nice, but life is rarely that simple. things get complicated plans go wrong. what do you do then?
so the authors made sure to ask their subjects some very realistic questions like, “how does your routine vary when you travel? how does your partner help, hinder or affect you? and if you don’t ask yourself some of the same harsh and almost cynical questions about the realities of your morning routine, then I hope you like a disney vacation, because you’re living in fantasyland.
check it out here.
OK, we have an overview and solid examples to work with. but maybe you’re a “go big or go home” type of person. that’s my style too. Looking at today’s successful people is fine and elegant, but let’s also take a look at what the greatest of all time did in the morning…
3) daily rituals
Mozart. Freud. Picasso. Tesla. And a lot of other people so famous that I only have to mention their last name for you to know who I mean. How did they start the day?
This book is a good addition to “my morning routine.” it’s less rigid and specific, doesn’t get bogged down in modern problems like email overload, and spends more time discussing the idiosyncratic factors that helped the greats be at their best, even if those things didn’t make sense to anyone else. /p>
ben franklin’s morning ritual was to take what he called an “air bath”. that’s what you and I call “sitting naked.” not for everyone, of course, but we all do dumb things that inexplicably just “work” for us. And this book tells you that it’s not just okay, it might even lead to greatness.
What do I like about this book? Actually, I don’t like this book, I love it. it’s inspiring i may not opt to smoke 20 cigars a day like freud, but it’s good to know that not all titans were perfect machines and ran smoothly. geniuses in history were rare. And frankly, I find it relaxing.
check it out here.
Well, we know what a morning ritual is and we have examples of modern hits and geniuses from history. that’s enough to design a great custom method to start the day, right?
but then you get to work and everything goes to hell. That morning routine wasn’t the start of a master plan, it was a temporary exception to the chaos that is your day.
So how do we transition from a morning ritual to a meaningful and productive work day?
4) deep work
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Rituals shouldn’t stop once the morning is over. Georgetown professor Cal Newport spells out six that will help you get focused on doing the things that really move the needle.
What do I like about this book? brings us full circle. Cal not only covers what it takes to maximize focus throughout the day, but also includes one more vital routine: “The Shutdown Ritual.” it’s the flip side of the morning ritual, making sure you can switch off and relax at night.
check it out here.
Okay, now you have your DIY morning ritual kit. let’s round it all up and learn about one more book that you could consider the “prequel” to everything we’ve discussed so far…
summarize
here are 4 books that will show you how to create the best morning ritual:
- what the most successful people do before breakfast: covers what a morning routine is, what your approach should be, and how to lay out the fundamentals.
- my morning routine: lots of smart morning rituals super successful people. modify as needed, add salt to taste.
- daily rituals: the routines of history’s creative titans. read it and be inspired… just wasn’t inspired to smoke 20 cigarettes a day.
- deep work: how not to screw it up completely when you transition from morning ritual to the maelstrom that is daily life .
A morning ritual is a powerful tool. but it is just that: a tool. if you don’t know what you’re building, what you’re nurturing, where you’re going… um, what’s the point?
What is your definition of a successful life? And what does it really take to make it in the big bad world? Which brings us to our bonus book…
Hey, whaddya know, the guy who wrote it — that’s me. I looked at the research to dispel a lot of the myths we’ve been told about a successful life. And we’ve been told a lot of myths.
To be happy, to get where we want to go, we need to know what really produces success, in our work and in our personal lives. without those answers, a morning ritual is an empty ritual. it needs to be in the service of something to be useful. and we need to know what is really effective.
check it out here.
When you know what you want and what will really get you there, you can start your day with a routine that clears your mind and furthers your goals. and then the path to follow is focused.
Turn down the volume on the distractions life throws your way. you stop reacting and start determining. you go from defense to offense.
you seize the day. don’t let the day catch you.
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