Thread by @julien

1/ Morning rituals are probably the most important thing you can have a handle on. Here are a few tips to get them right.

2/ create the right mindset - you need to be in a good fucking mood. if you aren’t, your whole day starts off wrong. for me this means:

- inbox zero
- 1000 words of “morning pages”
- ideally, no meetings until 10am except maybe a casual work breakfast

3/ the above gives me breathing room (ha), which leaves me feeling ready for the day, vs harried.

you may need different things, which is fine. but set boundaries on them.

my significant other understands it (and she has her own). we work on our rituals together so they can fit

4/ you need to have a CHOICE of what the right thing to do today is (when not in meetings or having off time).

start with a clean slate every day, with only REAL meetings on my calendar (not fake “go to the store!!!” calendar events).

this way i know what time i really have.

5/ from here, there are two methods:

a) choose a tiny thing to do so that you feel good
b) choose a massive thing that is hard to do, while you have lots of willpower

you'll notice both give you good feelings. choose based on your day and the stuff you have.

6/ you'll note i mentioned morning pages above. i told @UnmistakableCEO and apparently it changed his life, so here's a book that describes them. i've been doing them for 15 years and i believe i've made a huge dent because of that one habit.

amazon.com/Artists-Way-Ju…

7/ morning pages allow you to just freeform get a braindump done, with no judgement. if you do them every day (they were sacred for me for many years), you'll just process a ton of garbage. they feel useless one day and awesome the next, which is fine. keep going.

8/ typically for me, that is the end of my official morning ritual.

with this i've created CALM, FOCUS, and SPACE.

along with 8 hours of sleep a night, this is how ran a startup for 6y w/o breaking down into depression etc.

who knows, maybe i got lucky. but it worked for me.