Seth Godin was asked in a podcast interview (link lost, sorry), if he has morning practices. He replied with “Of course I do, how could you not?”
Whether or not we plan our mornings, we have a structure we tend to follow daily.
There’s a tension between morning practices and getting into the hard work of the day. Maya Angelou described how she rented a hotel room to do her writings. She would play solitaire card games to start the day. It was a way to relax her brain into doing the real work she was meant to do.
Seth Godin has recommended the Morning Pages technique by Julia Cameron. It’s a “dear diary” kind of writing in the morning, where you air your grievances and raw thoughts on three sheets of paper (and you can tear them up and throw them out afterwards). It seems that the technique is a way to process your morning thoughts, gets them outside of you, making room for the real work you’re meant to do.
The morning sets out much of the rest of the day. Rather than brewing a coffee as soon as wake up, I find it much more beneficial to hold off for at least thirty minutes (when the body is filled with a concoction of hormones in any case, to help you wake up and get going).
What’s your morning practice? Have you planned it out, or do you fall into a random practice that you’ve unintentionally found yourself in?