Five and a half hours

I recently wrote down everything that I would like to do in an ideal morning routine. The list included meditation, stretching, exercise, walking the dog, writing, reading, and seemed to go on and on. After I estimated the time required for each activity, it came to a total of five and a half hours.

Five and a half hours!

Okay, so maybe it wasn’t that surprising – I have always had a sense that there is a lot more that I should be doing in a day. Yet that would be enough time to ride 90 miles on a bike (in my younger, faster days), binge watch half a season of Game of Thrones (or so I am told), or drive from Denver to Glenwood Springs and back (road trip!).

There is no way that I am getting of bed at 1:00 AM in order to tackle all of that before the rest of the day starts. That is, unless I can put myself to bed before dinner the night before. And that would just introduce a host of other issues.

Left with few options, I looked back at the list. Everything on it seems, on the surface, to be good for me. A few of them I already do here and there – admittedly not as religiously as I should. I know that if I have a routine planned out, I will be much more prone to complete it than if I wake up each morning with a random list of “should do’s” bouncing around my head, each vying for bandwidth. In the dim morning light, it is all too easy to let these competing voices fight it out while I doze a little longer until it is too late to do any one of them.

Yep, I had some work to do before I could create the best morning routine for me. It certainly wasn’t the five plus hours of “should do’s.”

I thought about each item to understand why it was it on the list in the first place.

I wrote down the specific benefits that I expected to get from doing it. There were some items for which I struggled to identify a benefit. If I couldn’t see a purpose to the activity, would it be anything more than one more to-do in my day?

I thought about where the item originally came from. Some were the result of hearing a friend say that they have started doing this, or something I read about in a wellness blog. While I could tell you what the benefit is, it was not necessarily something that I was actually needing. There were also a few shadows of activities that have served me in the past, but have outlived their usefulness.

I was already trimming down my list. What remained were activities for which I could see a clear benefit to the current me. So what did the current me really need?

Morning routines can serve many purposes. It can be time to spoil oneself, be productive, foster creativity, or get healthy, to name a few.

Right now, I need my routine to support my broader goals. With those goals in mind, I considered specific actions and structure that will enable me to make the progress I desired. That list became my guideposts for what my morning routine should be.

Looking at my whittled down list of activities next to these guideposts, the few truly aligned items quickly came into focus. These were the ones that would improve my chance of success on my current goals, either by making some progress before the day begins, or by setting me up for success during the day.

Those that didn’t rise to the top were moved to another part of the day, or released from my “should do” list completely. I gave myself permission to protect my mornings and use them intentionally.

The final list added up to an hour of time. Much less daunting, it has become my motivation for jumping out of bed each morning.

I know that there will be days when the full routine does not come to fruition. I have already had a few of those days. Knowing what my ideal is, and more importantly why it is, I enjoy the benefits of being aligned with who I am and intend to be.

I also know that when and if this routine stops serving me, I have a reliable process for setting up a new one.

In the meantime, I will be fully appreciating the four and a half extra hours of sleep!