Morning routine: small habits, big changes

As I enter the clinical years of medical school, time will be limited due to the hectic schedule (up to 80 hours per week), and time will often be out of my control. I expect this to drain my willpower. How do I ensure I continue to take care of my health, relationships, and personal goals?

The solution is to create consistent routines that turn activities like exercise and organization into habits.

I developed my morning routine over the past 4 months while finishing up my PhD thesis. The routine is intended to build momentum for the day and make me focused and relaxed. It already kept me sane while preparing manuscripts for publication, presenting at national conferences, and writing that 210 page dissertation. 

Time to share it.

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Staples of my morning routine

These habits survived a dozen rounds of experimentation. They will be the core of my morning routine for a long time.

1) Clean up and de-grog: When I first get out of bed, I'm groggy. I used to dislike cleaning up my home, because it is mindless. It got cluttered quickly. Solution? Clean up when I'm groggy- just one section of the condo. This takes no mental energy, but gets me active and wakes me up. When fully conscious, I look around and get both joy and focus from the uncluttered living space. The small win, so early in the morning, brings easy motivation.

Lesson: look at problems in your own life, and pick habits that help you solve them.

2) Speech warm-up: I used to stutter and not articulate my words properly. A regular routine of practicing speech (I use alliterative poems) gave me the confidence for the next step: a lot of public speaking. This mostly fixed the problem, but I still do the habit to warm-up for the day, and to remind myself of my continuing goal to become an articulate and clear speaker.

Lesson: use morning routines to remind yourself of personal goals and warm up for the day.

Decide ahead of time exactly what the routine entails

3) 7 minute bodyweight workout: short, super-intense workouts are highly effective. NYTimes posted one anyone can do, but I found a far more intense version on Fitocracy (BURPEES). Don't be fooled by the short time interval- I'm dying by the end of it. For a challenge, just go faster. By this method, I can truly work out every day, no matter how busy I am.

Lesson: well-designed habits dispel the excuse "I don't have time."

I also listen to motivational videos while working out. Serves as a timer, motivates me, and reminds me of principles that help me solve life problems. Here's one of my favorites that teaches the power of habit.

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Experimenting

A morning routine is endlessly adaptable to meet one’s changing life needs, so I continue to experiment with it. 

Currently:

1) Make my bed. Never did this before, but I easily tacked this on to my established cleanup routine.

Lesson: use habits as triggers for other habits

2) Write for 30 minutes. Where do you think this article came from? Consistency.

Lesson: morning routines make side projects possible on a busy schedule

3) Meditate. I’m using meditation to train the ability to re-direct my attention at will. Unproductive rumination about something that makes me angry, sad, etc. severely hampers my effectiveness and happiness. Re-focusing my attention should prove invaluable in any tough situation. I use the Headspace app.

How to experiment:

Last time, I wrote about a dangerous trap when trying new things. Don’t simply collect a list of useful-sounding habits and string them together into a morning routine. You must prioritize taking concrete action on them, and see for yourself if they are useful to you.

But how you do choose a habit to take action on?

Method: 

Pick 2-4 habits. Try them all once, immediately.

The ones you like, commit to them everyday for 7-10 days. Discard the others.

The ones you still like, commit to them everyday for 1 month. Discard the others.

After 25-50 days, it’s a habit (exact time depends on the habit)

Find a way to visualize your progress.

At any point in this process, use your experience (what worked, what didn’t, and why) as feedback to identify other potential habits to try (again, try them as soon as you find them).

Warning: for the 1-month commitment, note that internal resistance occurs around 7-14 days, making you want to give up. During this period, motivation disappears (motivation is an emotion, and emotions are always temporary), and the habit is not yet ingrained. Your brain will come up with excuses like “I don’t have time” and “maybe what I'm doing doesn't matter.” Don’t give in at this point- otherwise you’ll never deliberately build any habits at all.

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More than just the habit

Bonus!!! Because of my speech warm-up, I find myself subconsciously working on my articulation throughout the day. This reminds me to pay more attention to others, and I feel a frequent impulse to smile, make eye contact, and listen to others. My morning workout reminds me to use occasional free time to go cycling or hit the gym. After a small morning clean-up for 4 months, I felt ready for a major overhaul: I gave away 60% of my possessions, and adopted a new organizing strategy that is both easy and beautiful.

You are what you do frequently. By doing things everyday, you change how you view your own identity. You no longer feel constrained by your current situation, personality, and weaknesses. Thus, the mental benefits far exceed the direct effects of daily action.

In summary, a morning routine allows you to:

• Feel in control of your day
• Target specific problems in your life
• Remind yourself of personal goals
• Warm up for the day
• String habits together as progressive triggers
• Dispel the excuse “I don’t have time.”
• Gain confidence to make bigger changes in your life

All this, by expending minimal time and willpower. What are you waiting for?

My Most Productive Month Ever: Some Secrets

Hi all! Just a quick update. This has been my most productive month yet (in my life), so I'll share my thoughts.

Back in June, I wrote a lot about:

1) working on my most important projects in focused, distraction-free 90-minute intervals
***2) batching together less-important tasks so they don't become distractions while I'm trying to get actual work done
3) preserving time for daily habits

Since my last post, I've taken #2 to an extreme, through a process of experimentation. I also have updates on #1 and 3, but I will save that for a future post.

The result can be summarized as three rules:

Rule 1: Schedule as many small tasks as possible on "Batch Day"

Batch days are perhaps the most useful innovation in my schedule. I pick the day of the week I have the most meetings/appointments and tell myself, "I don't need to make any progress on my research that day." Instead, I get all of the little things I need to get done out of the way for the week. This includes personal errands: laundry, clearing out my e-mail, shopping, cleaning, organizing, bills, etc. It also includes all the little tasks around lab that I need to do on a regular basis, favors I need to do for other people, and generally any task that takes time and energy but not much thought.

Essentially, anything that does not move my project forward gets stuffed into this single day per week.  These days end up being PACKED and I have no trouble exhausting myself by the end of the day. I usually don't finish everything, so I end up doing some "batch" tasks towards the end of other days of the week.

My time tracking for moving my project forward vs. all other tasks. Note that I only mark down time in which I am fully focused on the task at hand. Just being at work does not count for anything. My philosophy is work harder, not long.

This is intended to avoid letting these small tasks interfere with my research. They are extremely dangerous because they feel like productivity, so they can easily be used as an excuse to avoid making progress on my projects. Whenever such a task gets presented to me during the week, I put it on the list for my next batch day (which may be up to 6 days later) and go back to work. I only do the task immediately if it takes less than 2 minutes or if it is extremely urgent.

Unexpectedly, I'm now far more on top of my responsibilities than I was before. Because one day per week is specifically designated for small tasks, I rarely procrastinate on them. When someone asks me for something, I can tell them I will do it next Wednesday. And it's easy to deliver.

Rule 2: Schedule meetings only for the busiest day of the week.

Look at the schedule below. If someone wants to schedule a meeting, I will reply as follows:
"Thursday is best. If that doesn't work, I might be able to do Monday at 11am or 1pm, or Tuesday at 8am."



To concentrate on my work and do it right, I need long stretches of time to focus. Therefore, Wednesday and Friday in the schedule above must be protected at all costs. Switching between projects or tasks is the best way to lose time in the day.

Rule 3: Check priority e-mail once a day after finishing my work, and the rest of my e-mail once a week.

Checking e-mail is the best way to lose focus. Therefore, I designate a specific time in the afternoon AFTER I've finished my most important tasks for the day to check e-mail. Even then, I only look at and respond to things that make it into my priority inbox. Once a week, usually on batch day, I will quickly process my e-mail and reach Inbox-Zero in about 30 minutes (including responses and small to-dos).

On processing:
I never leave an e-mail in my inbox after looking at it. I immediately do one or more of the following:
     1) delete it
     2) archive it
     3) add event to my calendar
     4) add task to my to-do list (usually on my batch day list)
     5) write a note to myself and file it properly
     6) respond as succinctly as possible