What you do first thing in the morning often sets the tone for the rest of your day. On today’s episode, I’ll share the basics of how to establish a morning ritual, and some specific methods for starting each day strong.
You’ll learn:
– The four main stages of my morning ritual, and why they matter.
– Why it’s important to plan ahead for your morning ritual.
– How building a ritual will fill your well and keep you producing great work.
Since 2005 we've served up weekly podcast episodes to help you stay prolific, brilliant, and healthy. Follow the show in your favorite app:
You must be logged in to post a comment.
If you want your team to do bold, creative work, you must take the first risk by giving them clear, precise direction. Here are a few ways to do so.
Let your team do what you hired them to do.
Your job as a manager is to unleash the brilliance of your team, not to showcase your own.
Apple Podcasts
Google Podcasts
Spotify
Stitcher
iHeartRadio
Hi Todd! I LOVE this episode and agree wholeheartedly in setting up a morning ritual, regardless of the time you wake up! Mine includes coffee (of course!), three pages of free form writing (Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages), brainstorming and review of long-term projects and goals, and a brisk walk with my dogs while listening to an audio book or podcast that is interesting, stimulating and motivating- like yours! By the time I’m home from my walk I’m super-charged and ready to make progress on whatever project I’ve got on deck.
Fantastic, Cheryl! Thanks so much for sharing. (My routine involves coffee too – forgot to mention that…)
I totally agree with Cheryl. This was a GREAT podcast (among a consistent flow of strong Todd Henry podcasts that sit on top of my podcast-listening list). Todd made me rethink my “morning ritual,” which is actually split between an evening ritual of creating/updating To Do lists and exercise/podcasts with the dog. I think implementing the other components will help me better organize (and improve) the work for five different active clients, focus more about business development, and — for me — check all my clients’ social media first thing rather than, as often happens, letting that slip to later in the day.
I think Todd’s approach, once implemented, has the additional benefit of partially taking care of the You in Empty. Thanks, Todd!
By the way, I think the PDF is terrific and does a nice job of reinforcing other Die Empty material. I do have a question: Do you play music during your morning ritual or as you work, or do you find it a distraction from doing your best work?
Glad you enjoyed the PDF – more of that kind of thing coming with each episode moving forward.
I sometimes play Ambient Music Therapy’s “Deep Meditation Experience” during my routine, and almost always throughout the day when I’m doing deep work. I’ve written all three books with that as the soundtrack.
Todd,
I think morning rituals do set the tone for the day. I get up at 4AM ( I’m an OB/GYN) I run smile, then do 1 mile of sprints, 20 minutes of Yoga, then 20 minutes of meditation, then I write in my journal for about 10 minutes. Jump into the shower then have coffee with my wife in the library where we sit and chat ( no emails, Internet, or papers) then I’m out the door to the hospital by 6. I’ve been doing this for years ( even on weekends and vacation … I may get up at 5). This has been a game changer with regards to my health, happiness, and productivity!
Great episode, Todd!
Of all your AC podcasts, this was my favorite because it helped me realize that I’ve been doing too much in a given ritual “session.” Each morning (and night), I cover what I call the Four M’s: Meditation, Movement, Music and Mental Acuity (this last one covers activities like reading, writing and brain games). Your thoughts have me restricting my ritual to activities that ground and set the stage for my day rather than work on activities that help me get towards my various goals. I’m going to be finding time for those throughout my day instead.
Thanks for all your hard work on the show.
I like to start the day off with a quick sketch, I find the process relaxes my mind, engages all of my senses and frees my subconscious brain to visualize the rest of the day without any interference from me…
I love this, Mike. Thanks so much for sharing.
Great podcast! My morning ritual has a lot of similarities with yours, Todd, though I find that starting with reading pulls me off track and diverts my energy.
My days go best when I meditate first–just 10 or 15 minutes to just be, and practice focusing on my breath.
(TANGENT: Meditation is something I avoided for years, because I suck at emptying my mind, so for decades I figured it just wasn’t for me! It was only a few years ago that I finally realized that meditation is not about being a master mind-emptier; it’s about *noticing* when the mind becomes absorbed in thought, and gently bringing focus back.
In fact, that moment of noticing, “Oh, I’m thinking again,” is not an indication of failure–quite the opposite! This is the *magic moment* that meditation is all about!! It’s about developing the *mindfulness* to see when we’re distracted and then lovingly let go and return to breath with self-compassion.
In fact, I see meditation as a self-contained self-compassion machine!
It’s also a microcosm of what we need to do in the rest of our lives in order to accomplish great work: notice where we’re being pulled off track, and gently guide ourselves back.
But I digress… Back to the original thread…)
After meditating, I like to get back in bed and write for 15 or 20 minutes–a Morning Pages-style brain dump.
My freewriting then morphs into looking at my day, my life, my business, what I want to crawl into bed tonight feeling pleased about accomplishing. Pretty much the items in your EMPTY acronym, in fact, though I’ve never looked at them that way before or had that clean of a structure–brilliant!
Once this ritual is completed, I do some neck stretches while boiling water for tea and feeding the cat, and then the rest of my day starts. I have a mantra, “The thing I do FIRST is the thing that gets done” (and sometimes the only thing that gets done!), so I make an effort to do whatever I most want to accomplish *first thing.*
As a creative, my most important (and usually least urgent, easiest to put off) work is my creative work, and as a passion pluralite, I have a lot of kinds of creative work (painting, writing, music), which occupy metaphorical, rotating pots on my metaphorical stovetop, so whatever’s on the front burner right now is, ideally, what I do first, right after my morning ritual, before the onslaught of to-dos and email and everything else.
Does every day happen like this? No, I freely admit it does not. But the days that *do* follow this format always go better, so this is the template for my ideal day–my Ideal Daily Template. And I practice self-compassion on the days that don’t follow the template. :)
Thank you for sharing your own ritual, your four things, and your EMPTYING acronym. Really great stuff. I’m looking forward to reading your books!
PERFECT timing with this podcast, my friend. I have been working through creating habits for myself to stop that feeling of being reactive during my day instead of proactive. Plus, I have read more than once if you can create habits with mundane tasks, like doing the dishes, you suddenly do them automatically & your brain can think about a problem you are trying to solve instead of, “I need to do the dishes.”
My two young kids naturally split my day into six sections. The first two sections I have tackled are “Get the Kids Ready & Out the Door” & “Before Bedtime.” Both are filled with tasks that make the other run smoothly. Now that two nuts & bolts sections are indeed becoming habits I am excited to do the same inside “Before the House Wakes” – and this podcast is filled with gold for just that time of day. Thank you!
Very good episode mr. Todd Henry,
Thanks a lot for that great podcast.
The routine is a path, to find our route, and adjust our habits according with our true truth.
Increasing our rituals, our focus to listing our truth without noise, and a lot of thoughts, i believe that is easier to understand our path.
Best regards, and good every morning to you in your days.
Rodrigo Rocha, 34
São Paulo, Brazil
Project Manager
br.linkedin.com/in/rodrigorozelli
Hi Todd:
I enjoyed listening to your podcast episode on having a morning ritual. It reminded me of a couple things that I wrote about, which I wanted to share with you: 1. writing about Morning Pages at dazne.net/post/morning-pages/, and 2. writing about habits and rituals at dazne.net/post/rituals-and-habits/. I hope you find them useful. Look forward to your future podcast episodes.